Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Friday 19th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, I welcome the important development since our debate last Friday of the new Motion from the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. It is very important that we take every opportunity to scrutinise the Bill and consider the issues without jeopardising the overall timetable for parliamentary scrutiny.

In today’s debate, as last week, many concerns have been expressed about coercion, in various forms, to get people to an assisted death. The Bill has many provisions to address these concerns about coercion, and, of course, more options need to be considered. But we have heard less about the coercion that is already in force under the law today: using the power of the state to forbid some of the most compassionate forms of assisted dying. That is coercion too, and it is causing deep human distress, as we have heard throughout this debate.

Sometimes we can and do use the power of law to enforce a settled moral consensus in our society, but that is not the case here. Many humanists and others do not see any objection in principle to assisted dying, especially when, as with this legislation, it is restricted to people who are terminally ill.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, I have been very influenced by the most careful study of public attitudes by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, which included a sustained citizens’ jury that showed very clear majority support for assisted dying, provided that it is limited to people who are terminally ill and who have capacity to make a decision for themselves. That is the settled moral view of our society, reflected in the vote in the other House recently.

There are people with strong objections of principle. There should be no coercion for them to go for assisted dying; they should live and die according to their beliefs, but equally there is no basis for them to forbid others who are terminally ill and who have a different and legitimate moral view from taking the opportunity of assisted death. In his powerful speech last week, the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Belgravia, showed that that view on the right to assisted dying if terminally ill is deeply rooted in our western tradition.

The noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, made a very powerful point last week. He said that he and his family, with their religious beliefs, would absolutely not wish to have anything to do with assisted dying, but that he did not wish to forbid others who had a different moral view from taking the opportunity provided through the Bill. This debate and legislation are about how a society with a range of different moral and religious views can live together. The Bill, with its protections and provisions, paradoxically shows how our treatment of assisted dying can also enable us to live together as a society.