Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Lord Harper and Lord Kamall

Committee stage
Friday 23rd January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

Sorry, I will try to hasten it, actually, in many ways. Maybe we should slow down.

I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Birt, for the amendments in the group and the whole idea of establishing the assisted dying help service. As the noble Lord said, it is based on well-established experience. It seeks to address a number of important questions that the current draft of the Bill does not address. How will important services, such as care for the families of those who are seeking assistance under the Bill, be provided? Who will publish the appropriate information about the provisions of the Bill in the public domain? How will those seeking assistance be supported throughout the process? These are thoughtful amendments, but a number of noble Lords have quite rightly raised concerns about the potential downside to speed and efficiency in this case.

The amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Mackinlay seek to ensure that when a personal navigator is allocated to the person seeking assistance—that sounds like a good suggestion—there must not be a presumption that, when they appoint that navigator, the person will necessarily continue with the process to its end. That gives the person who seeks it the option of changing their mind.

A number of the issues that we have discussed today have been discussed throughout the passage of the Bill. I have a number of questions; they are more for the Minister than the Bill’s sponsor, but I think that many noble Lords have questions for the Minister.

On the specific matter of the assisted dying help service, as well as the duty to publish information on the Act’s provisions, what consideration have the Government given to the interaction between the legitimate dissemination of information about assistance with ending one’s life and the encouragement of suicide, as prohibited by law under the Suicide Act 1961? I know that this issue came up very early on but, in this specific context, it is worth repeating.

A number of noble Lords have rightly asked about the workability of the help service, including what the cost of managing the service and the other running costs might be. Do Ministers feel that resourcing the service adequately might undermine the effective delivery of other parts of government? As a number of noble Lords have said, the Government have not really answered those questions about the available resources and where the money will come from. Once again, I am taken back to Second Reading, when the noble Lords, Lord Stevens and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath—the latter being a former Health Minister—both said, “We know how the system works. This money will come from somewhere, and it will be at the expense of palliative care”. We are assured by those who support the Bill that that will not be the case; indeed, Ministers have themselves said that sufficient money will be made available. However, a couple of weeks ago, I asked almost the same question as my noble friend Lord Deben asked—albeit in a less eloquent way—of the Minister from the Ministry of Justice, and, last week, of the Minister from the Department of Health. To be fair to the Government, I received an answer from the Minister; if noble Lords allow me, I will touch on a few extracts from that letter and paraphrase where possible. The Minister’s letter to me said

“you sought confirmation that the Government is confident that palliative care will be sufficiently funded, so that those who may seek assisted dying services are offered a real, as opposed to theoretical, choice on palliative care to support them making a more informed decision”.

So far, so good. As my noble friend Lord Gove said, the letter talks about support for the hospice sector, including £100 million for adults and £80 million for children—I almost sound like a Minister responding here, I know, but we have to be fair when we challenge the Government on this. The Minister also mentioned the all-age palliative care and end-of-life care modern service framework for England to improve the services. The noble Baroness, Lady Berger, said that it would be published in spring 2026, but the letter says that it will be published in autumn 2026—I think the Minister answered that; let us be fair: that is better than the answers that many Ministers from all parties have given over the years, where they often say “at pace” or—what is the other phrase?—“in due course”, but at least this gives us a real timeframe. The Minister also talked about the framework being aligned with the ambitions of the 10-year plan.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

On that point, I also got a copy of that letter. It is worth saying that, in the 10-year plan, there is no ambition for high-quality, universal palliative care. It is not there. So, if the plan the Government are going to publish in the autumn is aligned with it, I think we can see that they do not plan on making universal, high-quality palliative care available in the next 10 years. That is a real problem for decisions taken under this Bill.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that intervention. Before commenting on the content of the Bill, I was seeking, just to be fair to the Government, to lay out what they have told me.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Lord Harper and Lord Kamall

Committee stage
Friday 9th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I just want to make one point—