Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

Friday 13th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

Before anybody else intervenes, I should have said at the beginning of this group of amendments that the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, and the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, will be taking part remotely. I apologise to both of them for forgetting that at the beginning. The noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, is taking part remotely and I invite him to speak.

[Lord Shinkwin (Con) [V]]

My Lords, Amendments 162, 194 and 858 are in my name, and I should make clear that I do not intend to move them. Amendment 162 proposes that, where a person has Down syndrome or a learning disability, a registered medical practitioner must not initiate, suggest or raise the matter of assisted dying with that person. This is consistent with two findings of a new poll by Whitestone Insight, to which my noble friend Lord Harper referred in the previous group. It shows, first, that 84% of people believe that assisted dying should be initiated only by the patient, and that figure rises to 91% among people aged over 75. It also shows that 86% of people support additional safeguards for people with Down syndrome, autism and learning disabilities.

Ken Ross of the National Down Syndrome Policy Group told the Select Committee on the Bill that

“those with learning disabilities may place great weight on a doctor’s suggestion and be unduly influenced towards choosing an assisted death”.

He added:

“The acquiescence bias risk from people with Down syndrome is extraordinary”.


We have talked extensively about the huge risks of coercion caused by this poorly drafted and unsafe Bill. As our forensic scrutiny has highlighted, these cannot be overstated for some of the most vulnerable members of our society, including people with Down syndrome or learning disabilities.

The noble and learned Lord has complained about the number of amendments that have been tabled, but, bizarrely, he did so without any acknowledgement that this reflects the very poor state of this unsafe Bill when it came to your Lordships’ House. It is regrettable that the noble and learned Lord, in his consistently dismissive responses, is sabotaging noble Lords’ carefully considered and reasonable attempts to mitigate the worst effects of his badly drafted Bill. That is the purpose of Amendment 162 and its consequential Amendments 858 and 194, none of which I would have needed to table if the Bill were safe. Amendments 194 and 200A, in the name of my noble friend Lady Maclean of Redditch, who cannot be present today, would require the Secretary of State, by regulations, to make provision about the training, qualifications and experience that a registered medical practitioner must have if they are to exercise their professional judgment under Sections 2 and 3.

At the moment, despite the sensitivity of these conversations, not least with people who, because of Down syndrome, are predisposed to agree with what they are told and are unable to compute the gravity or finality of the choice of an assisted death, and the fact that a conversation is the first step on the pathway to end that person’s life with lethal drugs—despite all this, there are no minimum requirements for training or experience. In such a situation, where the Bill grants every doctor legal protection if they exercise their professional judgment to discuss assisted death with a person, is it not essential that there are minimum requirements to qualify for this protection?

Surely, the question is how they could not need minimum training or experience to deal with such delicate and sensitive situations, especially those involving people with Down syndrome and learning disabilities? I cannot understand how anyone could think that they do not, unless there is another agenda at play that prioritises, over everything else, making access to an assisted death as easy as possible, and thus unencumbered by safeguards such as those my amendments would provide, in particular to those with Down syndrome or learning disabilities, because these disabilities would place them in an invidiously vulnerable situation

Mr Ross told the Select Committee that such training should be mandatory. He also cited a shocking statistic which underlines the point made earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, about the extent of existing discriminatory outcomes in evidence of health inequalities, which was revised only two months ago in a corrected version of the 2025 LeDeR report. The statistic is that just over 40% of people with learning disabilities die from avoidable causes—and that is now, without the Bill. We may consider how much worse the Bill would make that deeply unsettling statistic.

Mr Ross also told the Select Committee:

“There is a real fear among the people with Down syndrome I have spoken to that this Bill will further target their lives”.


Is the noble and learned Lord really going to ignore their fear? I have to say, that is not the Labour Party that I, and many other disabled people, know and respect.

While dismissing the case I made in Committee on 6 February relating to people with congenital lifelong conditions such as mine, the noble and learned Lord expressed sympathy and referred to my “fate”—which is a bit ominous, although perhaps inadvertently accurate in the context of this Bill. I dare say I should be grateful for such touching thoughtfulness, although I am not sure his sympathy would afford either me or, in relation to these amendments, a person with Down syndrome or a learning disability any protection from the deadly provisions of this deeply flawed Bill.

In closing, I readily acknowledge that translating warm words of sympathy into effective safeguards might defeat even the most able of advocates; perhaps, therefore, I could offer a more practical solution in the form of these amendments. I hope the noble and learned Lord will accept them.