Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Ashcombe Excerpts

Friday 12th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashcombe (Con)]

My Lords, this Bill raises profound concerns for me, and I wish to outline five reasons why I cannot support it in its current form. First, although many of us have faced the death of loved ones, in my case I have witnessed the extraordinary comfort that high-quality palliative care can offer, both to patients and to their families. This level of care is not universally available, as we have heard. I consider myself extremely fortunate. Far too many people, due to underfunding and limited access, are denied this vital support at the end of life. When individuals are left without access to proper palliative care, they may begin to see assisted dying not as a choice but as the only escape from suffering.

My second concern is that, as people grow older, many lose confidence and become vulnerable. This leads them to being susceptible to subtle pressures—pressures that can arise from well-meaning family members and friends. More troubling still is the potential for overt coercion, where someone may be made to feel a burden or believe that their life no longer holds value, and thus opt for a path they do not truly want. How and by whom is this being evaluated?

Thirdly, even with the strictest safeguards, we must learn from the experience of other countries. In places like Canada and the Netherlands, as we have previously heard, we have seen a gradual expansion of the eligibility criteria far beyond the original intent. What begins as a tightly controlled process can, over time, become worryingly permissive. There are reports of individuals shopping around for sympathetic doctors, even when they are not terminally ill. This risks the potential of normalising suicide as a legitimate solution to human suffering.

Fourthly, I am deeply concerned about the position in which this Bill places medical professionals. Although I acknowledge that some doctors believe that helping a patient die peacefully is, in certain circumstances, an act of compassion, there is a stark difference between that and actively participating in determining who qualifies to die. I am particularly concerned that a doctor can raise the thought of assisted death with a patient without the requirement to also discuss palliative care. This means that discussing assisted dying alone could almost be considered coercion. It also goes against the current UK medical law—and the GMC—on informed consent, which requires doctors to discuss the various treatments and options for patients and give them long enough to consider these options. This is ethically very problematic and challenges the very foundations of the medical profession, which is grounded in the preservation of life. It runs counter to modern GMC guidelines and risks turning doctors into the gatekeepers of death, not life.

Finally, I worry about the broader cultural impact. Our society is built on the principle that every life has an inherent value, from the beginning to the natural end. This Bill risks undermining that ethos. It sends a dangerous message that lives of the elderly, disabled or chronically ill may be less worth living—that they are expendable when they are no longer seen as contributing or useful. I do not deny that there are tragic cases, and we have heard some today, where medically assisted death may appear preferable to prolonged suffering. But this Bill, as it stands, is not the right instrument. Its potential consequences are too grave, its safeguards too uncertain and its impact on our societal values too profound. For those reasons, I cannot support it.