Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Friday 12th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)]

My Lords, earlier this week, this House earnestly discussed in Oral Questions how to reduce suicides. Suicide has not been a crime for over six decades, but we still think that it is wrong and we still try to prevent it—until today. Today, we consider crossing the Rubicon. We debate not how to prevent suicide but how to facilitate it with the support and resources of the state.

We are told that the purpose of the Bill is to prevent terrible suffering, but there is nothing in the Bill that says this. The essential condition is that someone must be terminally ill, not that they are suffering. We are told that there are safeguards. In the House of Commons, the Bill’s proponents relied on what we were told was an internationally unique safeguard, the authority of a High Court judge. Then that unique but inconvenient safeguard was dropped. We are told that only the terminally ill will be permitted to be helped to end their lives, but if you believe that personal autonomy, the right to choose death, is the overarching principle, why should the law logically stop at the terminally ill? What about the terminally miserable? Why should it not be their right, or anyone’s right, to be helped to die?

I am afraid we already know how the elderly are too often regarded in our society as a burden or a nuisance. We are less inclined than other cultures to care for our elderly in our own homes and more inclined to place them in care—“They’ll be happier there”; “They’ll be better off there”. In these daily acts of purported compassion is betrayed how some will deal with the unwanted elderly if they can. It is not hard to see how, with just a small slip down the slope, the elderly will be dispatched. Of course, it will be “their choice”, as they will not want to “get in the way” or be a “burden”. When the vulnerable are encouraged towards the view that it is better for them to die, the Orwellian-named assisted dying service will be there to step in.

The stories we have heard about the suffering of the terminally ill are heart-rending and we cannot fail to be moved by them, but that is surely a reason to invest more in palliative care, not to commit resources to assisting suicide, and we cannot responsibly legislate simply because we are moved. In truth, we cannot legislate away suffering. No so-called safeguard will persuade me that this Bill is safe or right. Indeed, the very need for safeguards—for instance, against coercion—should warn us of the profound danger to which we are about to expose the elderly and the vulnerable. I cannot support this Bill, and I fear for the consequence if it passes.