Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

Friday 12th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Keeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest: my brother is a consultant in palliative care. Today, I want to speak in defence of palliative care and hospice support for people with terminal illnesses. It is deeply troubling that this Bill and the debate surrounding it, certainly before today, have given so little consideration to palliative care.

I oppose assisted suicide in principle and I oppose this Bill. It is poorly constructed and it was rushed through the Commons with inadequate scrutiny, with many amendments not debated. Crucially, it does not even require that those requesting assisted suicide are offered a palliative care assessment first, yet specialists tell us that palliative care can help people who wish to die to rediscover reasons to live. At a recent Lords briefing, palliative care practitioner Dr Lucy Thomas shared the story of a patient who had considered Dignitas but changed their mind after receiving hospice care. Within days of starting that care, they felt valued rather than abandoned.

Sadly, too many terminally ill people feel abandoned by the NHS due to the lack of palliative care. Sarah-Jayne Blakemore wrote movingly in the Times about her father, the neuroscientist Sir Colin Blakemore, and the palliative care he received. Diagnosed with motor neurone disease, he had planned to go to the Netherlands for euthanasia. He never did that, as at each stage of his illness he was supported by his family and paid carers to cope and to find enjoyment in life. When his wife died, he struggled with depression and feared losing control, a fear echoed in the debates on this Bill. But after a hospice doctor explained his palliative care options, his daughter says he became optimistic and hopeful again. He went to stay at the hospice after developing a chest infection. His daughter describes how, for the last 10 days of his life, he received

“the most gentle and attentive care from people who had dedicated their lives to end-of-life care”.

She acknowledges that her father was lucky to live near a hospice

“that enabled him to have a peaceful and dignified death”.

Ahead of this debate today, we have been privileged to have briefings from leading palliative care experts including Professors Mark Taubert, Katherine Sleeman and Fliss Murtagh. Those clinicians, with decades of experience, tell us that almost all patients offered high-quality palliative care benefit from it, but it is often too little and too late, or indeed not offered at all. We do not provide enough care and support for people with life-limiting illnesses or for their families. Over 100,000 people die each year with unmet palliative care needs. Indeed, a Marie Curie survey found that in only half of expected deaths did families feel that their loved ones received adequate support with health and care in their final three months. We should have invested in palliative care so that more people can benefit as Sir Colin Blakemore did. It is unethical to leave the needs of 100,000 dying people unmet. We must consider those who do not and would not choose assisted suicide and ensure that they are offered palliative care first.

I pay tribute to my colleague Florence Eshalomi MP, who tabled an amendment in the Commons to ensure that no care home or hospice should be obliged to provide assisted dying. Hospices exist to offer comfort, dignity and holistic support, not to facilitate premature death. Introducing assisted dying into hospices risks undermining their purpose and deterring those who seek life-affirming care. Hospices are places of hope and compassion; they should not be asked to become sites of medicalised death. We must protect the integrity of our care institutions. We must safeguard the vulnerable and uphold the rights of those who dedicate their lives to end-of-life care. This Bill is not the solution. We should start with investment in palliative care to make it available to all who need it, including care at home.