Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Beith Excerpts

Friday 19th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, I do not bring to this debate any medical knowledge or expertise. My relevant experience is in having cared at home for both my first and my second wife as they faced the terminal stages of metastatic cancer. Noble Lords will have memories of my second wife, Baroness Maddock, and her work in this House, which she continued with determination as she coped with her cancer treatment.

Whatever ethical or religious view I might take about assisted dying or assisted suicide, I respect the sincerity and strength of feeling of those who want this change in the law. Whatever view I individually take, as a liberal I cannot simply deny that freedom to others, unless granting the freedom causes or could cause so much harm to others that it justifies the intervention of the law. The debate has demonstrated that there are potentially very significant harms to others which could result from the Bill. Whatever our personal view, we are duty-bound to assess the harm and consider whether it can be successfully mitigated or is so great that the Bill should not proceed.

I will not list all the numerous dangers already identified, but high among my concerns is the fear that many people will have that they and others will be put under or feel pressure to end their lives. They may feel that they should take this course rather than being seen as a burden to their families, the health service or society—and that is envisaged in the impact assessment.

I am concerned that this will severely damage the way medical staff interact with patients, and it would be quite wrong to offer an unequal choice to patients between assisted suicide and palliative care when the suicide help is available but the necessary level of care may not be. I have met wonderful people working in palliative care, but there are not enough of them, and the service varies greatly in availability and quality in different areas.

I am also concerned that existing palliative care practice could be adversely affected by the Bill. If medical practitioners have administered drugs to relieve pain and symptoms for a patient, and that patient dies within six months, will they be accused of failing to go through the procedures this Bill provides for intended death when there was no such intent and the drug use was entirely to bring comfort to the patient?

The hospice movement, which is massively dependent on charitable giving, has many concerns about how the Bill would operate, both in clinical practice and in its impact on giving from people who do not want their gifts to support assisted suicide. As the Bill stands, hospices, whether residential or home-based, are not allowed to opt completely out of the system, and that cannot be right.

I serve on the Constitution Committee of this House and fully endorse the objections it has raised to the use of unamendable secondary legislation and disguised legislation to define many of the most central features of the system being created and its relationship to the NHS. I am also worried by the exclusion of the coroner’s jurisdiction in England and Wales. There will be cases which would, without this provision, justify investigation and, in some cases, an inquest. It is unwise of us to forget that, although doctors and families will almost always be acting in good faith in very distressing circumstances, medical carelessness, malpractice and undue influence can occur.

I was also struck by the reference of the noble Baroness, Lady May, to the Bill’s potential to impact on the very worrying level of suicide among young people. The Bill may offer a wholly unintended signal that taking your own life is the answer to your problems, and we will have to do something about the growing crisis if the Bill proceeds.

If I were a determined supporter of the Bill, I would still want it to have the most careful scrutiny informed by detailed evidence, not just a few Fridays of conventional House of Lords sittings. We may get that, although under a very tight timetable. I say this not in criticism of the Bill’s promoters; they were working within the straitjacket of Private Member’s Bill procedure. But that means that we now have to set about filling the gap to make sure that, if the Bill goes ahead, our concerns are met to a much greater extent than was achieved in the Commons. If that cannot be achieved, some of us would feel that we should give up on the Bill and start again. I have this fear—this instinct—that this is one of those big decisions that society may one day regret. There will be no way back.