Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Campbell of Surbiton Excerpts

Friday 16th January 2026 Lords Chamber

This is a really important group of amendments. We need a lot of honesty about what we are trying to do here. I appear to be quoting the noble Lord, Lord Harper, quite a lot today—that is not a scenario I thought would possibly ever happen—but I join him in very much welcoming my noble friend Lady Campbell back to the Chamber today. Her expertise in the Bill is paramount. I would not dream to count how many disabled people are in this Chamber, but there are two wheelchair users. I am very much looking forward to the contribution she will make on the Bill.

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (CB)]

My Lords, I hope the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, will forgive me for intervening at this stage. I know we are all in a hurry, and I have not got my name on any of the amendments—yet. Noble Lords will know that I have been away for over six months because of an accident on the high seas, when I found myself hurled across the room by a wave. I broke my leg, I dislocated my shoulder, and I had all sorts of internal injuries. I spent the next six weeks in St Thomas’ Hospital, instead of here talking about the Bill. I do not know quite where I would have rather been, but I am here now. I hope noble Lords will forgive my late interventions having not been at Second Reading, but I am jolly pleased to be back, and thank noble Lords for their welcome, which has been very nice.

I want to say something very briefly about burden and motivation. We all know that burden is one of the primary reasons for people to seek an assisted death. That is not only in the conversations I have had here, but we know it is the primary reason throughout the world. Burden is real. It is why, in another life, I set up the organisation the National Centre for Independent Living, because I realised there were hundreds of disabled people living in institutions or in their mum and dad’s back room, basically just surviving, not living.

I also campaigned for a law called the direct payments Act, with which the noble Lord, Lord Harper, will be very familiar. That allowed severely disabled people to employ their own personal assistants, so that they would no longer be a burden on their families. No one wants to rely on their families or their spouses. I certainly do not want to have to rely on my husband to get me up in the morning or to put me to bed at night. I am his wife: he is not my carer; he is my husband. And that is a good relationship.

There is an answer to burden, and it is good social care support. Good infrastructure or technology allows you to be independent and not to be a burden on others, but to begin to plot your life as you want it to be. I know this because I have helped hundreds of disabled people to do it. Some of them had progressive conditions and would not live for long, but the lives they had for those years were good lives—good months and good weeks.

I am not saying that it is always the answer, but we surely must find out from anybody who is asking for their life to be ended, “What are your reasons? Is it because you do not have adequate social care? Is it because you cannot get out of your house, because nobody from the local authority has come to build you a ramp?” For disabled people, people with terminal illnesses and people with progressive conditions, these small things can make the difference between them wanting to die and them not wanting to die.

I know this, because they have told me. Many disabled people come up to me and say, “Jane, you know, I love my independent living and I love my direct payments. If that was taken away and I was forced to go into an institution against my will, I do not know what I would do. I would probably ask for an assisted death”. They were not joking. It is the truth. We should all think about motivation and that is why I support this suite of amendments. We have not really grasped that nettle.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, I too warmly welcome the return of my noble friend Lady Campbell—the most extraordinary person and advocate for disabled people and so many more in our societies. I just remind the Committee that, in all these discussions about burdens and people who have had a stroke— I am terribly sorry that the husband of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, had a stroke—we are talking about six months for somebody who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. We should reflect on and remember that in all our deliberations on the Bill.