Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Harries of Pentregarth Excerpts

Friday 12th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

My Lords, if we pass this Bill, we choose to go down a particular road. Before we do that, we ought to ask where the road leads and whether there are any stopping places on the way. First, I much respect those who have long campaigned for this Bill. Their position rests on two convictions that I share: the importance of free choice, and a desire to relieve human suffering. However, I ask supporters of the Bill to think about those who experience unbearable suffering but who have many years to live.

In 2008, 23 year-old Daniel James went to Switzerland with Dignitas. As a 16 year-old he played rugby for England, but, paralysed from the waist down as a result of an injury, he could not bear the thought of a whole life in that situation. The hearts of all of us go out to people in that position. It is of course difficult to weigh the intensity of one person’s suffering against another, but we can measure time. Is not the thought of having 60 years of hopelessness ahead worse than six months of pain? In the course of my life, I have met many people suffering from acute schizophrenia and multipolar disorder who time and again have tried to kill themselves. Even when they are in a good period, they have said that they would rather be dead than have to go through the cycle of their illness again. One has to ask whether it is worse to have six months to live, or a lifetime of mental anguish.

It seems to me clear that, if the desire is to relieve people of unbearable suffering and they have the right to choose whether they live or die, the logic of the argument—if you like, the argument of compassion—is absolutely inescapable: that a Bill more along the lines of the one in Canada or the Netherlands is the only one that will do what is needed. If this Bill goes through, there will be inevitable pressure to amend it to include unbearable suffering of many kinds, physical and mental, not perhaps in the next year or two but certainly within a few years. It is inevitable because the logic of compassion is even more strongly in favour of such a Bill than it is in favour of the present one.

Therefore, I ask the supporters of this Bill to think about whether they really want a situation such as in Canada and the Netherlands, where it is possible to be assisted in dying for a whole range of causes, mental as well as physical. I am not arguing for or against a Bill like that; I am just asking whether supporters of the present Bill regard that as desirable. In 20 years’ time, the proportion of elderly in the population will be much higher. Millions will be suffering from dementia, and it is difficult to believe that the resources to care for them, already badly stretched, will be adequate. There is a kind of nightmare scenario of assisted dying becoming the default option.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, pointed out that the law in Oregon on assisted dying for the terminally ill has lasted now for 25 years or so and has not been changed to a law like the one in Canada or the Netherlands. That is a good and absolutely fair point, and I totally accept it, in principle. But my argument is that the argument from compassion based upon free choice and the desire to relieve suffering is even stronger in a Canada-type Bill than it is in this one, and therefore there will be inevitable pressure. This morning, as I was sitting at the bus stop waiting to get on, a lady asked me what I was doing and I told her that I was coming to do this. She immediately said to me, “But what about those people who are suffering from incurable conditions and have years to live?” It is safer not to go down this road at all.