Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Lizzi Collinge and Rebecca Smith

Report stage
Friday 13th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)]

I rise to speak to amendment (a) to new clause 15, tabled in my name, which I hope hon. Members will support. Although it may seem technical, it is in fact a simple amendment with a significant impact. It will ensure that there is genuine protection against abuse, proper detection of coercion, and effective scrutiny of how the law works in practice. Simply put, it will ensure that deaths from assisted dying under the Bill will still fall within the coroner’s duty to investigate deaths under section 1 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. I will explain why that is important.

Like many hon. Members, I have been deeply concerned from the outset about how the Bill is drafted, its workability, and its impact on the NHS and on the lives of vulnerable people up and down the country. To be clear, my view is that one unintended death as a result of the Bill becoming law is one too many. I humbly ask hon. Members who are still considering their position, or who are minded to support the Bill, to consider this point about my amendment carefully: what is an acceptable error rate?

Based on the figures in the Government’s impact assessment, which I think underestimates the impact, even a 1% error rate would see a minimum of 13 wrongful deaths in year 1, with 45 per year by year 10. A 5% error rate would see 65 deaths in year 1 and 227 in year 10. A 10% error rate would see 131 deaths in year 1 and 455 in year 10. As I say, I think those are low-ball estimates, but they are nevertheless chilling. If this law is passed, it will be exceptionally difficult to say whether there have been errors or instances of abuse; or, at the very least, any errors picked up will be but a fraction of the true picture, as tragically those who would testify to the fact will already be dead. My amendment (a) to new clause 15 directly addresses that issue.

In England and Wales, a coroner will investigate a death when certain legal conditions are met. This duty is primarily governed by section 1 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. Judge Thomas Teague KC, who served until 2024 as the chief coroner of England and Wales, notes:

“any death arising as a consequence of the ingestion or administration of a lethal substance constitutes an unnatural death which the local coroner is under a statutory duty to investigate”.

Clearly, assisted dying meets that definition, and it is right that such deaths be afforded the best possible posthumous judicial scrutiny.

[Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady not feel that the provisions in the Bill already have safeguards? Also, and most importantly, does she not feel that putting a family through a coronial process when the death is expected is unfair, unjust and completely beyond the bounds of what coroners are meant to do?

[Rebecca Smith]

On the first point, I do not believe that the Bill is strong enough as it stands. On the second point, we are already dealing with the fact that families are not even guaranteed knowledge of their loved one having an assisted death, so I do not think the hon. Lady’s point is entirely to be considered.

As it stands, the Bill would disapply the duty of the coroner to investigate in the case of an assisted death that has been carried out in accordance with the Bill’s provisions. New clause 15, specifically, would amend the Coroners and Justice Act to clarify that assisted death does not constitute “unnatural death” for the purposes of the Act. I think it takes an extraordinary leap of imagination not to conceive of deliberately self-administering lethal drugs as anything but an unnatural death.