Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Friday 12th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, the strength of feeling on this issue is understandable. Rarely do we get to debate such a truly momentous issue. But in the end, this is a question of personal choice. No one is suggesting that assisted dying should be mandatory, nor even that it should be widely available. In fact, under this Bill, few might be eligible to ask for it, let alone choose to take up the option. All that this Bill would do is make it possible for a dying person to die the death they want. I do not believe that it is my right, or the right of any of us in this House, to deny another individual that option.

Could anyone have been in Milbank House on Tuesday listening to Nathaniel, now battling with pain in order to continue walking while he can still move his cancer-riddled body, and deny him what he craves: the certainty that, when he can cope no longer, he can have the death he chooses? It is, he says, his dying wish that this Bill should become law. Barely 40, until very recently a music teacher and marathon runner, he says that he is receiving excellent palliative care. He does not wish to die yet, but when life becomes intolerable, he wants an assisted death. He is anything but suicidal, and the use of that word is an emotive effort to confuse two very different things. Nathaniel does not want to kill himself; he is dying already.

Many noble Lords have talked of the need for investment in palliative care. That is not a matter for debate. We all want investment in palliative care. Assisted dying should be viewed as merely part of a palliative care package. Palliative care cannot always deal with all pain. One of the many letters I received on this subject said: “No matter how good we can make palliative care, there are always those for whom the experience of terminal illness and dying involves suffering that cannot be alleviated nor endured … We need both good palliative care and assisted dying to be available”. The author of that letter was a former hospice director and consultant in palliative medicine.

Sophie Blake has been a vigorous campaigner for better palliative care and for assisted dying. She does not want to die, despite the pain that she suffers from multiple cancers, but she is allergic to opioid painkiller, which makes pain relief difficult. She is terrified of going through excruciating pain when she does die. But worse still is the fear of her daughter watching that, so while she fights for better palliative care and for her life, she is desperate for the right to have the peaceful and dignified death that this Bill could deliver for her. I want to be able to reassure Sophie, Nathaniel and others that I will help to give them the reassurance they crave, and that I could not give my own mother when she was dying.

During the course of this long and balanced debate—and we are only halfway through—many have voiced concern over a lack of safeguards, but there are safeguards, and there will be more. The Bill is not perfect, and this House will do its job: scrutinise it and improve it where possible. But we need this Bill to move ahead quickly. I support it.