Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Watts Excerpts

Friday 21st November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in this group. They are important because, unlike the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, I do not know what the outcome of this debate will be at the end. She might have some other knowledge of how this House will vote, but I certainly do not know the answer. Therefore, it is vital that we spend the time and debate these amendments, because words are important. If anyone ought to know the value of individual words, it is noble and learned Lords in this House, because many of them spend their lives arguing on the edge of a pin about particular words. As a matter of fact, they make a considerable amount of money out of arguing about single words. Words are important, so let us not try to pretend that words do not matter. Therefore, on “coercion”, “influenced” and “encouraged”, I believe that we need to get this right, because the Bill could pass this House.

I know that there are those who do want to shut down debate. I sat in the House of Commons on Wednesday at Prime Minister’s Questions. I noticed earlier today that for a considerable amount of this debate the person who raised it at Prime Minister’s Questions was sitting here. He is the right honourable Member for North West Hampshire. He has left his position on the Steps of the Throne, but he was here for a considerable amount of the debate. He was indignant and incensed that this House wants to look at and scrutinise this Bill because it was passed by the Commons. I was in the other House for 25 years, and I know that in those 25 years, under successive Governments, the other House got Bills wrong and had to change those Bills. I do not believe it is correct to suggest that just because the other Members have passed the Bill, somehow we must bow and surrender to their superior knowledge, and therefore I believe that we ought to spend time—

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

From the number of amendments here it is clear that this is about wrecking the Bill. It is not about improvements, it is about wrecking the Bill. I went through this with my late wife, who suffered a very long and painful death and wanted to have the opportunity of ending her life. If they wreck the Bill, Members should think about the thousands of other people who will go through that same process.

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

I do not believe that people are tabling amendments simply to wreck the Bill. That may be the noble Lord’s opinion, but he should remember that other people have different opinions. I respect the noble Lord’s opinion, but I hope that he will in turn respect my right to have an opinion. I believe that we must scrutinise this well. I noticed that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, objected to the fact that practically no one who supports the Bill has spoken. I know of no one supporting the Bill who has been stopped from speaking. They did not get up to speak, and therefore they were not stopped. If there are those who want to support this Bill and to get up to speak, they are free to do so. I certainly would like to hear their opinions just as well. I believe that I have an opinion that ought to be heard equally, as they have.

I come from a family that knows what the reality of suicide means and the heartbreak of suicide, where we examine and wonder whether something more could have been done before that person ended their own life in suicide. I know the pain of that and the loneliness that they went through. Therefore, I believe we must get this right.

In the domestic abuse and coercive and controlling behaviour context, a victim may, due to intimidation or trauma, deny that their actions are caused by wrongful coercion. Is the doctor supposed to be weighing the patient’s words against the very limited evidence that they can see in an examination room? Professor Jane Monckton-Smith OBE, professor of public protection at the University of Gloucestershire, emphasised in her testimony to the Select Committee the significant difficulties in relying solely on a person’s verbal denial of abuse when assessing coercion:

“I have worked in this area for a very long time. I have seen victims refuse medical help when they have been hit in the head with a hammer through fear. That is not an isolated example. If you speak to the other people here, I think they will probably agree with me. What I am saying is that coercive control is a serious social problem. It will impact on the people who are going to look to this Bill”.


Also in the Lords Select Committee evidence, Cherryl Henry-Leach of Standing Together Against Domestic Abuse warned

“the difficulty is the lack of insight into the impact of coercive control on somebody’s ability to make decisions, even though that has been enshrined in case law”.

I do not want to detain the Committee, but in over 50 years as a minister I have experienced people coming to the end of their life. I have been with them in their moments of their deepest pain, and, as a noble Lord said, was there with the families after the occasion, trying to minister to them. I also know what it is from my 25 years as a constituency Member of Parliament in the other House, and we should not close our minds to the fact that people can be coerced. Sometimes it is done very subtly and gently within family dynamics, and that is difficult for assessing doctors to detect in limited formal settings.

Therefore, I believe it is vital that the words put into this legislation, if it is passed, are the correct ones that cover all these possibilities. Remember, when the person takes that lethal injection or whatever potion they take, there is no return as far as this life is concerned, but they go to another.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

Of course, and I apologise for not answering it.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

Can we perhaps shoot just one fox? There was a suggestion that there are not enough non-Anglo-Saxon GPs available to do this. I have just looked at the facts: 46% of GPs were born outside the UK and 25% of them are from Asia.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

I am very grateful to my noble friend for mentioning that, because that is what was being whispered to me but I did not have the statistics. I am very grateful to him for providing them.

--- Later in debate ---

On the claim that people who die with specialist palliative care input—of whom there are thousands every year—do not die with dignity, I have to defend my professional colleagues and the hospice services. Dignity-enhancing therapy has been developed within the palliative care community to demonstrate how other services may have failed and how you can enhance dignity, and if—

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

Would the noble Baroness agree for one second that, even if someone has good hospice care and the best medications that they can, there are still patients who suffer and have pain before death, despite all the actions of the people who are trying to alleviate that?

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

I thank the noble Lord for the intervention. Perhaps it might be helpful for us to have a conversation outside this Chamber. But I would just say that pain is complex. It is not only physical; it has multiple components. Of the patients I have had the most difficulty looking after, we discovered that there were very many issues in the psychosocial and emotional domain: things that had happened in the past, some of which we did not know about at the time. But I do not want to go off message from these amendments, which are really important.

These amendments were put down in good faith to address the concerns expressed all around the Committee. I am disappointed that we have not got to the point of saying that we will all sit down together. I think that those of us who have drafted amendments will sit down together and discuss how we should bring something back on Report to manage the situation that we highlighted today, which is a very profound concern over coercion, abuse and all the other factors that go along with that. Apart from that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.