Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Debbonaire Excerpts

Friday 12th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Debbonaire (Lab)]

My Lords, I was explaining to a group of people last night what the virtues were of speaking in your Lordships’ House and of being in the debate. Somewhat controversially, perhaps, for a former Member of the other House, I found myself saying that the advantage of having no constituents is that you can look at the evidence and listen to the arguments. I find myself in awe of the depth and quality of evidence assessed and arguments made today, and of the listening.

I intend to use the prism of eating disorders as a way of examining some of the arguments that have not yet been made, because I am going to stick to my resolution not to repeat points that have already been well made about the lack of choice when there is not a sufficient quality of hospice care, and so forth. Other noble Peers have made those arguments very well. If you are a young woman, and it is typically women, with an eating disorder, you may have consulted a website about how to do that better. We in both Houses have tried our best to legislate against such websites, with the Online Safety Act, and rightly so. You may not have consulted a website about how to commit suicide, but you may have done. Again, the Online Safety Act rightly seeks to stop that happening. Many of us voted for that Act, and we did so thinking about what was currently legal but harmful. I stand by that, and I am committed to it.

If you have an eating disorder, that is in fact a mental health condition. It is not covered by Clause 2(2) as it stands, because voluntary suspension of eating and drinking is not the same as an eating disorder. They are different things, and it is important to distinguish them. I do not pretend that this is easy for anybody. I do not pretend that it is easy for us in this House, who have to take incredibly seriously the fact that if we get this Bill wrong, people will die who should not die at the stage they will die.

That is one of the reasons, as one of my noble colleagues has already expressed, why your Lordships’ House came to view many years ago that capital punishment was wrong. I hold that same view now about this Bill. I speak with intense pain and love for those who have made eloquent and heartfelt cases to end the suffering of those who are terminally ill. I understand that. However, this Bill is not worded so as to end suffering; it is worded so as to end life, and we have to draw that distinction. If it was a Bill about ending or alleviating suffering, the provisions of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill would be about palliative care, and they are not.

In the case of eating disorders, I represented a constituency where there were no specialist treatment beds in hospitals when they were needed, at the point when that mental illness had become life-threatening because of the physical consequences. As the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, so truly said, treatment delayed increases the risk of a terminal end. Do we really want to legislate so that people who cannot get treatment then become terminally ill and seek assisted dying as the route out of that? Is that what we want to do? We are in danger in your Lordships’ House of doing just that.

I do not think that is the intention of my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer, or of my friend, the much-loved Kim Leadbeater, or anybody else who is in favour of assisted dying, but that is where we are going to end up. I am not in favour of assisted dying, for a complex set of reasons—but I am not here to speak against the principle, I am here to speak against the Bill, because we are legislators, and that is what we are here to do.

I wish for all noble Lords in their thoughts over the coming weeks to consider the specific case of eating disorders, how that does not work in the context of the Bill and why that matters, and then to consider that frame for other conditions for which lack of treatment will exacerbate the risk of terminal illness which was preventable.