Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Gove Excerpts

Friday 16th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)]

It may be helpful for the Committee if I simply read, very briefly, for the assistance of considering this amendment, what the former Chief Coroner of England and Wales, Justice Teague, said about the background to the decriminalisation of suicide when giving evidence to the Select Committee. I think the Committee would want to consider it. He said that

“the reason the change was made was not a change in the public policy towards suicide; it was a change in the criminal law to decriminalise it, because the situation had developed where you could not effectively prosecute the person who successfully committed suicide. What the law was doing was prosecuting people who failed. It was manifestly improper and unjust that people should, in effect, be punished for failing to achieve suicide, but it was always made clear at the time of the debate in Parliament that it would remain an offence to assist a suicide, and that it would be the policy of the law that suicide was not something to be approved of”.

In that context, the Committee may wish to consider whether, given that the act being considered here is the assistance of a suicide, it should be plainly named as such, as the noble Lord, Lord Frost, proposes in his amendment.

[Lord Gove (Con)]

My Lords, I will take just a minute or two. Words matter. In America, in legislation similar to that which we are entertaining, it is known as “medically assisted suicide”. Similar terminology is used in Switzerland. Those are both jurisdictions that have informed this debate. Recently, in the British Medical Journal, a physician who works in Scotland made this compelling point:

“The phrase ‘assisted dying’ creates confusion and is poorly understood … just 43% of respondents”


in opinion polling

“thought ‘assisted dying’ involved the provision of lethal drugs to end somebody’s life”.

Fewer than half of the public understood what was meant by this legislation. He went on:

“The majority believed the term meant withdrawing life-prolonging treatment or providing hospice-type care”.


If so many of the public have the wrong view of this legislation, how can it possibly not be of assistance for us to use plain language on a matter of such moment?

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords—