Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Grade of Yarmouth Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grade of Yarmouth (Non-Afl)]

What a privilege, but what a responsibility, to be a part of this debate. It is clear from every speaker that we all feel that responsibility.

If this legislation passes into law and subsequently proves, like all legislation, defective in some respects, there is no way in which subsequent revisions can restore the lives of those who have succumbed to its provisions. Nearly all noble Lords, for or against, have expressed huge anxiety about the so-called safeguarding clauses in the Bill. I urge your Lordships to reread these clauses. Surely, they must alarm us all. Why are these clauses necessary at all? All sides agree, I think, that there are real dangers of coercion, mistakes, wrong judgments and undisclosed facts that surface after the death warrants are signed. These clauses are not, and can never be, a guarantee of fair play. No drafting can eliminate the life-and-death risks arising from the Bill. These clauses represent an acceptance that there will be circumstances where mistakes, greed, ignorance, coercion and other unknown factors are at play after enactment.

Despite the fatal consequences of drafting errors and omissions, supporters of the Bill are asking this House to believe that their safeguarding clauses will work exactly as drafted and that doctors can always know when you will die. No, this Bill, like all Bills, will not be perfect when enacted. In real life, it is certain to prove defective in some unforeseeable ways. Unlike other legislation, there is no redress—certainly not from the graveyard. I cannot support the Bill. It is a risk too far. I have listened to the front-line palliative care specialists whose concerns easily outweigh the eloquent pleadings of lawyers and others a long way from the front line. These are my practical objections and the reasons I believe that this legislation should be put out of its misery.

I finish with some words on the underlying principle: not my words, but those of one Mr James Wickes of Esher in Surrey, who wrote to the Daily Telegraph as follows:

“SIR—Assisted suicide is not a private medical matter—it is a moral line. If Parliament crosses it, the message will be clear: some lives are no longer worth living.


No person, institution or machine is worthy to make that judgement. Yet we now find ourselves debating it as though it were just another healthcare policy. The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is not about compassion: it is the logical end of a society that has replaced shared moral foundations with individual subjectivity and duty with personal preference. We do not and cannot fully understand the mystery of life—its beginning, its purpose, or its end. From that uncertainty flows a duty to protect life, not to authorise its termination.


MPs who are wavering should recognise this legislation for what it is: a profound statement about who we are and what we value. I urge them to vote against it and uphold the principle that life is not ours to dismiss.”


On the evidence of this debate, Mr Wickes, I believe, speaks for the majority of this House.