Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 21st November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gove (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I have moved my seat. I wish to speak briefly as a member of the Select Committee who has not spoken.

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

We will hear from the noble Lord, Lord Goddard.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I moved from my position at the front, because there was a presumption that I was the Front-Bench spokesman trying to force something. I apologise; I was not. This House has a free vote, and nobody is whipped. I happened to be sitting on the Front Bench, and I have moved back; I understand the alarm I may have caused by standing up then, but I was not trying to derail the debate. I was just trying to be helpful, because lots of people have spoken, and I respect every single person who is doing so in the House—for and against. Within my own party we have the same difficulties.

It is about evidence. I want to help the House today, on the specific premise of coercion. Sir Max Hill, the former Director of Public Prosecution, said that

“throughout the time that I served as DPP … we did not have the coercion offences created by the Bill, which I suggest would be a significant advance, and nor did we have a legal system in which the investigation was taking place before the death. … The major advantage of the Bill, if I can put it that way, is that … scrutiny will be before death”.—[Official Report, Commons, Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill Committee, 28/1/25; col. 86.]

That comes to one of the points the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, made—that when you are dead, it is too late to find out what has gone on.

In the other place, mandatory specific training on domestic violence, including coercive control and financial abuse, was introduced into the Bill and agreed through an amendment tabled by Jess Asato MP. Participating doctors and members of the multidisciplinary panel will have to undergo specific training in this area, as well as in assessing mental capacity. I believe there are now safeguards in the Bill—I think that was what the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, was alluding to.

It seems to me that we in the House think this is the first time this has ever happened, but the fact is that 300 million people across five continents have some form of assisted dying legislation. Not one of those countries has ever repealed it. It is right that we make it the safest and the best, and that the amendments be debated at length.

Noble Lords should forgive the cynicism of those who support the Bill—one Member said last week, causing some humour in the House, that they were sorry they came second to another Member in getting amendments down. This is not a competition; this is about getting the Bill right and fit for purpose.

I find it quite amusing when I see the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Carlile— it is worth the admission fee just to see the interaction. The points from the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, were right about trying to come to a conclusion and move forward. It is right that everybody speak, but that we speak to the amendments and try to get to a conclusion.

The noble Lord, Lord Dodds, is right: we should give it time. But we do not have time. We have four Fridays and no more. The Government have said they are not going to give way. If we do not finish the debate on these amendments, which are increasing every day—I believe we are up to 1,500 now—the Bill falls. Somebody—not me but someone else—might say, “Well, it is somebody’s objective that we run out of time; then we can stand here wringing our hands and say that we were just trying to make it the best Bill we could but we ran out of time and are very sorry”. That is not acceptable. Our role here is to ensure that legislation goes back to the other place, fit for purpose and the best we can make it. Somehow, we have to distil these amendments into something understandable.

[Baroness O’Loan (CB)]

I do not want to interrupt the noble Lord for very long. I just wanted to ask him this: is he aware that this House has the right to reject this Bill should it choose to do so? It is a Private Member’s Bill, and there are no conventions that apply in that situation. It is important that the House fulfils its scrutiny role. Another Bill could be brought forward that might be very different, but this is the Bill we are asked to debate, and we will debate it as best we can to improve it as best we can.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

And if we run out of time at the end of that, the Bill falls. Someone will say, “it is not our fault”, but it is our fault.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way, because he is clearly trying to be constructive in taking us forward. Is not the real problem that a Private Member’s Bill is just not suitable for this issue, which is so complex and sensitive? We should have had a royal commission; I believe the Commons should then have had a vote in principle; the Government should then have brought in draft legislation; it should have gone to pre-legislative scrutiny; and then both Houses could have dealt with the issue properly. This is the problem—not your Lordships, not the scrutiny we want to do, but the very fact that you cannot possibly bring in assisted dying through a Private Member’s Bill.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

Unfortunately, you can, because that is how this country works. It is called democracy. When 650 elected Members, representing 70 million people by a majority, send it to this House, we have a duty and the honour to treat that Bill with respect, not disdain, not threatening to derail it or run it out of time—

[Lord Deben (Con)]

Could I just put this to the noble Lord? He is suggesting this approach, however bad a Bill is, however many people are damaged by it, and whatever the mistakes in it. The Government say that, at the moment, the Bill is not suitable as legislation. We cannot go on discussing it until we get it right. As noble Lords know, I am not in favour of this Bill, but I am even more not in favour of a Bill that gets it wrong and does terrible damage. He surely is not saying that we should just pass anything and that that is okay, when we think of the people who are going to be damaged if we get it wrong.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

The noble Lord is on completely the other side of the argument, and I respect his views on that. This Bill has been scrutinised for over 100 hours in the other place. Evidence was taken from over 500 people. This is not just a piece of paper sent up here for us to determine.

[Baroness Cass (CB)]

Regardless of the amount of scrutiny, there are absolute conflicts between intent and delivery. The reason there cannot be trust in how we deliver this in real life is the very point made by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, and the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin: on the one hand, we are discussing the importance of coercion and of recognising it, yet it has been voted that you cannot ask the person why they want to die. I do not know how you can then possibly assess coercion. Unless you can hear from the person in their own words why they want an assisted death, you cannot even advise on symptom control, let alone on whether they have been coerced. There is the conflict between the intent on page one and what is expected in the delivery. If the Bill has arrived here with that level of conflict between what is on the first page and how it is expected to be delivered, then we change that; otherwise, it is not fit to pass through this House.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I respectfully accept that position. The problem is that the more I speak, the more I will be intervened on, which is the opposite of what I am trying to do; I am trying to speed the process up.

All I am trying to say is that we all want the best Bill possible. I get that. If that cannot be managed, something else will have to happen. I was only trying to bring in the evidence of three former Directors of Public Prosecutions. One of them, because people had said, “We’ve had no real-life experience”, actually advanced to us, “I’ve got Parkinson’s disease and I’m going to die. I have a terminal illness”. He actually said that to the committee, and added that if the Bill passed he hoped to avail himself of it. That is just one little anecdote from probably the only person who gave evidence who actually has a condition, which he confirmed to us freely. He was not asked to do that.

All I am trying to do is balance the evidence, because a lot of people are quoting evidence. I want to try to redress that a bit and to gently move this on a bit quicker. I have completely failed, because I have been standing up for nine minutes. I apologise to the Committee for taking up too much time.

[Baroness Berger (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I will make a point that has been raised on a number of occasions, about what happened in the other place and the number of hours that were dedicated to the Bill there. It is important to put on record that this House received a Bill that is very different from the Bill as it was first presented to the House of Commons. Many hours were taken up in the other place on a Bill that was completely altered. I will point to one particular issue. The process massively changed from a judge-led process to a panel. In fact, of the 91.5 hours of debate in Committee in the other place, 62 were on a Bill that still had the High Court process in it. So we have to reflect in our deliberations that many hours were rightly taken scrutinising the Bill in the other place, but we have now received it in a very different form.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I accept the noble Baroness’s position. Perhaps a High Court judge might resolve the issue, then.

[Lord Gove (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 52, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. I do so as the Government Chief Whip who helped ensure that the Serious Crime Act 2015 was placed on the statute book, and as the Justice Secretary who was responsible for some of its provisions thereafter.

I am hugely grateful to the noble Baroness for raising the vital question of domestic abuse and violence in the context of coercion. I do not believe that this has been suitably explored, canvassed or analysed before. I would be grateful for the reflections of the Bill’s sponsor on how we might protect some of the most vulnerable in our society.

I will respond very briefly to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, who pointed out that there may well be inadequate protections for those people who are coerced or persuaded into declining treatment that might prolong their life at the end of their life. There may well be inadequate protection and a case for stronger protection but, as has been pointed out before, there is a world of difference between declining treatment that might preserve your life and having a lethal injection that will end your life. It is a point that the medical profession fully understands and one that should be firmly borne in mind.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 23rd January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

If I may, I would like to come on to the issue of the information around drugs, because that is key. But I did not want people to think that simply signing the form was adequate.

Withdrawing ventilation, which was raised earlier, is a fundamentally different situation from this. If a patient is on a ventilator, they would have died earlier without that intervention. When they withdraw consent for ventilation to continue, you still have a duty of care towards them. You need to go through all the processes as to what you will do when you withdraw the ventilation and how that will be managed, so the patient understands how long you expect it to take and that they will die without the ventilation. They must understand that they are dying of the disease that they would have died from previously. That is quite different from to the proposal in this Bill about lethal drugs. I will come on to those lethal drugs now.

This has been sold out there to the public as if this is a Hollywood death—as if you take one little tablet and that is the end of it. In evidence to the Select Committee on 22 October, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, stated that the substance used

“will be safe, efficacious and not cause suffering”.

I would like to know the basis on which he can say that with assurance.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

In the Select Committee, Chris Whitty, the head of the NHS, said that no drug will be given to any patient that was not approved by NICE. That is what he said: no drug will be given to anybody that was not approved by NICE.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

When you prescribe a drug for a patient, NICE may have given approval for it, but the side effects, the toxic effects and the interaction with other drugs is not determined by NICE. That is done by the clinician, who must inform the patient. I do not dispute that they must be NICE-approved drugs, but NICE has not done an appraisal process for these drugs to be used for the process of ending life. The fundamental problem is that no research has been done into how these drugs, at high toxic dose, actually end life. I will come on to that, if noble Lords will bear with me.

In 2022, I co-authored a review of the efficacy and safety of drugs used for assisted dying, which was published in the British Medical Bulletin. The Oregon mixtures used to bring about death, which have been referred to, have a 6% to 7% complication rate. We have heard about the complications; I will not go through those again. The drugs are not being given at a therapeutic dose. I am not going to go into the doses, because there will be people watching this broadcast who may feel suicidal and there is no way that I want to be complicit in giving them information that promotes their suicidality.

The one thing I will say is that this is not about morphine. Morphine is not used to bring about the deaths. In Oregon, DDMA—the one already referred to—consists of overdoses of diazepam, digoxin, a small amount of morphine and amitriptyline. But the doses are 100 to 200 times the therapeutic dose. That means you are talking about 100 to 200 tablets to be swallowed or crushed in a mixture to swallow. Digoxin has a delayed effect in creating an abnormal heart rhythm or cardiac failure. Amitriptyline is highly toxic to the heart. Nobody has done the research in these patients to look to see why and when their heart stops.

Some patients, however—nine in Oregon and seven in California—have been documented as reawakening. Although that was not counted as a complication in their reports, these are documented. The Bill says nothing about what happens when the patient starts to reawaken, when they will be extremely drowsy and unable to take a further dose of drugs, or if they are very drowsy and have a very prolonged time between ingestion and death. As we have heard, the highly toxic barbiturate that has been used in Switzerland and in some other countries is not licensed for humans and there is no data on it.

Just to illustrate that it is not always straightforward, in 2017, a man called Kurt in Colorado was told that his death would come about within about two hours when he was given lethal drugs, but his wife described him coughing and choking for eight hours until he died—certainly distressing. If you are going to take this lethal mixture, you need to know what is in it and how it is going to bring about the end of your life.

There is also the ability in this to have equipment—that is specified in the Bill. But again, without knowing what that equipment is, we do not know what the patient will be consenting to. We have heard about the Sarco pod, which was a disaster in Switzerland, but the person who developed it is trying to develop further modifications of it. Basically, the idea is that a lack of oxygen will cause cardiac arrest and death, but, again, no research has been done. When the drugs are given intravenously, there is a short-acting sedative and, in the case of about two-thirds of patients, it is followed up by a paralysing agent, which means that all movement stops, you cannot signal if you have reawakened, you will stop breathing because all your muscles are paralysed and you will die of asphyxia. The difficulty is that the research that needs to be done has not been done.