Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Prentis of Banbury Excerpts

Friday 12th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Prentis of Banbury (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for giving you three very personal examples. When I was in my late twenties, we had a baby son who died, and I almost died giving birth to him. For a few short hours, while our lives held in the balance, it looked as if choices would have to be made. In fact, this was not the case. There was nothing to decide. But the whole experience gave me a much deeper understanding of where law and medical ethics collide. I learned that, to be kind, law must be very clear. I was able to use this in my later practice in coronial law and, for example, in representing the Government in some very high-profile cases on this issue.

My second point is that death within the law can be—and indeed usually is, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London said—very good. My parents’ deaths are examples of this. My mother’s six years ago and my father’s 12 days ago were assisted by excellent palliative care. Drugs were able to help my parents to breathe and ensure that their pain could be managed at the last. These were good deaths. But my concern is that doctors need to be empowered to be frank and honest and to provide holistic care for the person they are caring for. One of the best things we did for dad was to go round his body disconnecting some of the bleeping machines and syringes that were in him and ask, “Why do you need that? What’s that for? You know that he’s dying. Let’s take it away”.

Those on my side of this debate must be honest as well. There is a small group of illnesses for which a peaceful death is not a likely outcome. We need to focus our efforts collectively on these—on managing them and on managing the law to support them being better deaths.

My third concern is that the ill are very vulnerable. I have recently been diagnosed with aggressive cancer and my treatment starts this week. My prognosis is excellent. I have every advantage. I have a strong faith, a loving family, an interesting workplace, good colleagues, a supportive community, enough money, underlying good health—and indeed excellent treatment, I should say. But there have been some very low moments in the past few weeks, when I have realised the burden I am to my family, who are currently arguing about who should take next week off to look after me. I also have concerns about watching them watch me suffer, as well of course as my own fear, frankly, of pain and loss of control.

I watched that final debate in the Commons, and what struck me was that woman after woman and ethnic minority after ethnic minority, and disabled people, stood up and said, “This Bill is not good enough for my vulnerable community”. My Lords, please do not write me letters and messages; I am drowning in kindness. Instead, I ask noble Lords to think hard about me, with all my advantages, feeling like a burden—just briefly, not all the time. Do not worry; I will be back this time next year, bouncing around. But I ask noble Lords, instead of messaging me, to think about the vulnerable and how easy it is for them to feel that their lives are not worth living.