Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Friday 27th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

My Lords, contrary to Amendment 129, I think that the Bill gets it right in requiring, at Clause 4(3), that the voluntary assisted dying commissioner must hold or have held office as a judge of the High Court, the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court. This is quite clearly not a medical role. Its principal functions are to ensure that the statutory processes and safeguards that Parliament would have established are being adhered to.

However, we have to accept that a postholder having been a judge does not automatically mean that they will not come with personal views about the scope of the law that Parliament has passed. Therefore, the debate that the Committee has just had on how to make sure that there is transparency about the views that such an individual might hold before their appointment is ratified has merit.

For example, I was very struck by an important interview that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale of Richmond, the former President of the Supreme Court, gave in Prospect magazine in December 2024. She recorded that, in the case, for example, of Tony Nicklinson back in 2014, who wanted it to be declared that it was lawful for people to assist him to take his own life because he had a disabling illness but was not terminally ill, two Justices of the Supreme Court

“would have been prepared to make a declaration that the current law on assisting suicide was incompatible with the Human Rights Convention”.

She went on to say:

“There were nine of us on the court. Of that, five of us took the view that when the time was right, the court might make such a declaration of incompatibility. But three of those five thought the time was not yet right”.


I infer from that that—at that particular point in time, anyway—five Justices of the Supreme Court would have taken the view that the Bill before us, if passed by Parliament, would fall foul of their reading of the European convention.

It is helpful to think about the mechanisms by which Parliament could know the views of such judges, were they to be put forward for appointment as the voluntary assisted dying commissioner. The thrust of Amendment 127 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Beith, therefore has merit. It would require, for example, pre-appointment hearings by one or more Select Committees in the House of Commons, which would give us an opportunity to probe these questions and make sure that a nominee was going to stick to the faithful implementation of the legislation that Parliament, after such careful deliberation, would have produced, rather than, for example, interpreting the role of the voluntary assisted dying commissioner as in some way akin to that of the Children’s Commissioner, which is clearly an advocacy role for the rights of children.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, this is a really important clause and a really important schedule. This is the one time when a judge, whether they are current or retired, will be involved in any of this process after the Commons chose to strip judges away from the original proposal. I have tabled stand part notices opposing Clause 1 and Schedule 4 because I would prefer a judge-led process; I have a lot of sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, articulated several weeks ago.

Let me say at the start that I disagree completely with the idea from the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, that this role should start to become like that of the Children’s Commissioner, the Victims’ Commissioner or similar. That is simply not the case, and not only because the legal powers in the Bill—in Clause 18, in particular— are where they must make judgments on whether there have been errors of law in the panellists’ determination. I am very keen, which is why I have tabled Amendment 913ZD, for us to get this back in focus, particularly in terms of the commissioner’s role, and to think about this person being a judge, not the Secretary of State.

I agree that it should be the Lord Chancellor so, to some extent, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beith, that Select Committees of Parliament should be able to go through this process as well; it should be the Ministry of Justice and the relevant committee in the Commons. There is precedent here. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, who managed to get a determination role for the Treasury Committee so that it had, in law, a power of veto on the appointment of the chair of a body; I think it was the CMA, but I cannot quite recall it right now. So there is a precedent in this regard.

I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, just said. The Bill is right, in that it should be a retired judge. There are a lot of views and a variety of opinions on this. So far, only one retired judge, as far as I have been able to ascertain, has come out publicly against the Bill. Those who have expressed views are, as has just been articulated, very much in favour of the Bill; in fact, they think it should go a lot further. So some sensitivity will be required by whoever gets to make the decision on who the commissioner should be.

My noble and learned friend Lord Garnier would like this role to be done by His Majesty. There is a certain irony there. It is good to see so many Lords Spiritual here. I did try to see whether I could table an amendment to strip out, at the very beginning of the Bill,

“with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal”,

but the Lords Spiritual have already been very clear that they do not, and will not, consent to the Bill. Why, then, should we put the onus to make this appointment on the Supreme Governor of the Church of England? I appreciate that there have been some difficulties with the current Prime Minister and his appointments recently, but I would be surprised if anything quite so careless happened again with future appointments concerning this or other approaches. More broadly, I support their proposals to get this into the public appointments process.

On Amendment 134, I support my noble friend Lord Moylan completely in trying to prevent mission creep. That is a risk, which is why I have tabled Amendments 913ZA to 913ZD and 914A to 914C as probing amendments. Schedule 1 to the Bill says that, basically, the Secretary of State will hand over as much money as they see fit. They will decide on pay and pension arrangements and will give people offices—all the things one might expect of a sole corporation. As far as I can tell, none of the employees will be civil servants, unless they are seconded civil servants.

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[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

The noble and learned Lord did not speak at all to his Amendment 480 in this group. Is he planning to address it later in group 3? I am conscious that he did not particularly address my amendments, but I assume it is because he disagrees with them, which I understand. However, Amendment 480 has not been talked about at all. It is okay if he wants to address it in group 3.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

I apologise. I will talk about it in group 3.

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I turn to Amendment 459. I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, will forgive me for responding to one of her amendments before she has had a chance to introduce it, but it will enable her perhaps to rebut what I say. But I had to say that straight away because the idea that this all has to be done in such a public way, without any acknowledgement of what the person who is dying is going through, is extraordinary.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

It is Committee; the noble Baroness can come in later.

As I say, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, will be able to speak to Amendment 459 afterwards. One consideration has to be that the person has informed their children of their decision for an assisted death. I cannot be the only person who knows people for whom there is completely no relationship between parent and child. The child could be aged 60 and have been living abroad for years. They might not know their parent is ill and may not have been in touch with them for 40 years. But somehow we are going to have to try to track down children. Also, the ill person may not want their child to know that they are ill. We are all old enough now; we have had lots of friends go through this. I had a friend who did not want his daughter to know he was terminally ill because she was facing her own health issues at that time. But this would somehow lay down that despite the desire of a father, in that case, nevertheless that child has to be found and told that their parent not only wants an assisted death but that their parent is dying and wants an assisted death.

I really wonder about this denial of agency. If that person does not want to tell their child, according to Amendment 459, they have to make

“adequate arrangements for another person to inform the children”—

who might live abroad, or whatever—

“of the assisted death and provide bereavement support”.

I just wonder what world we are living in where, when someone is reaching the end of their life, some agency of the state demands that they tell them whether they have any children, whether they know that those children are still alive and where they are, and has to tell that child that their parent is ill and that—in a way, a smaller matter—they want to bring forward that death a little bit so that it is not too bad at the end.

Some of these ideas seem to me to exclude from our consideration the patient concerned. They seem to put everyone else in a position of taking decisions. The noble Baroness, Lady Cass, spoke earlier about the amendment that wants more and more specialist advisers brought in. Can we just sometimes revert to remembering that we are talking about seriously, terminally ill people who surely have some agency over their life? If they are refused this, they can still commit suicide but they will probably do it, as a friend’s father did, by going into the garage, blocking the bottom of the door so that no air can get through, turning the engine on and killing themselves that way. I wonder sometimes whether we are remembering that people are facing a terrible end and we just ought to have a little respect for them.

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[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I have tabled a handful of amendments, a couple to Clause 17 and then some more to Schedule 2. It is perfectly acceptable for the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, to be appalled by some of these amendments. That is okay: that is her perception; that is her reality. It may not be what my noble friend intended, but we are dealing with a serious situation.

Noble Lords have talked about finding somebody dead. Of course, it would be devastating if the family around them had not known that somebody was thinking that the only way life could get better was if they did not have a life at all. That is the reason for some of the aspects about bereavement services and connection to next of kin, so that there is that contact to see whether somebody who is in a very dark place is terminally ill or doctors have suggested that they have less than six months to live. An interesting area that we are discussing is about the tipping point for somebody to choose to accelerate that, to take that poison, and for the state to help them do it without being in touch with the next of kin. I know there are other groups where we get into that in more detail, but this is why it has become so sensitive.

I held my mother’s hand as she died. She had less than a month to live, and we looked after her. My dad died while I was on a plane, and I found out when I landed at Heathrow Airport. That is why I cannot watch the end of “Love Actually” because it is everybody meeting their families. It is the most I have ever cried in my life, and I have to switch off the film before the end. These are very significant moments.

I am conscious of what noble Lords have said about whether this should be in public. I think on balance it should be in public because we are having this effectively quasi-judicial process, which is at the end of a line, to some extent, making sure that somebody is doing this of their own volition and is not being coerced. That is why all the different safeguards are suggested.

I have tabled Amendment 480A—I appreciate that the noble and learned Lord will, perhaps next time, speak to his Amendment 480—which refers to how the panel will operate. I believe that an audio link is not enough in terms of discussions with the co-ordinating doctor, the person doing it and, indeed, the person’s proxy. In person or by live video would be good. I have tabled Amendment 483C to amend subsection (5), which currently provides:

“Where the panel considers it appropriate for medical reasons, it may make provision for the use of pre-recorded audio or video material for the purposes of subsection (4)”.


I can completely understand that, but I can understand it only for the person applying. I do not understand why the co-ordinating doctor would not be available to go in person or on a videolink in order to have that interaction with the panel. I have chosen to put that amendment in at that point.

The panel is an important part and that is why it is vital to get to the bottom of Schedule 2. Another noble friend asked me to ask the sponsoring Member whether there would be immunity from suit for the panel members, but I want to get into a few amendments that I have tabled. I am trying to work out how this is all going to work. I see this panel very rarely meeting in person, and I can see it evolving quite quickly. It will all be done by Zoom or Teams, and that concerns me. If the intention is that this is going to be available effectively probably 365 days a year, I am trying to get a sense of how this is going to work.

I appreciate that the Government will not want to answer that; they say they have not done the thinking, but somebody has done the thinking, because this is what the legislation is about. We now have, in parts of Schedule 2, panel members even starting to ask whether they can have pension contributions. Who is going to be doing these roles? Is it going to become a full-time job? It is one of the reasons I put a suggestion—it is just a number—of a maximum of 25 years for panels. I do not know if that is a panel per day, whether multiple people will be in a panel, or whether it is a one-off panel. I think the Law Society, in its written evidence to the Commons, suggested that it should take a day per panel, per application. The Government have costed in an estimate, in their equality impact assessment, of two hours. I am trying to get a sense of who is going to be doing this.

I have not tabled an amendment about this, but will there be a register about who is there? I do not want this to become a thing for, dare I say, vigilantes to try to intimidate people, but there is a question about how we do some of the vetting—I will not repeat what my noble friend said earlier. I am also genuinely concerned that we are going to give this an international element. I do not mean the person applying, necessarily—we covered that some time ago—but the people on the panel. That is why I have put things like a judge in England and Wales. You can be a King’s Counsel and be in Canada or Australia, where there are all these other things, and in law at the moment that does not stop it being the case. People might think I am overimagining things, but I am trying to be precise about what the law allows and trying to understand how it might work. If I am wrong, fine: I am happy for it to be said in Committee that that is not going to apply, but I want it to be said in Committee, so that if anything does evolve like that, we can start the judicial reviews to stop that practice.

I have suggested in Amendment 921ZB that it should not be King’s Counsel. That was inspired by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, in his Second Reading speech. It made me think a little more. I am not trying to do this so that hardly anyone can do this role. What I am trying to ask is why we talk about high judicial office being needed. A pretty high-level judge or a KC, without being too rude to KCs, is not exactly the same comparison. There are plenty of other judges—deputy court judges or district judges—who are all regularly used to having this arbitration or tribunal approach, so I do not understand why we have limited it to being that or a KC.

As for Amendment 932A, I do not see why the lawyer is the person who has to chair it. This happens quite a lot in decision-making bodies in government: things just evolve. The reason why the local resilience forum in Buckinghamshire is actually across Bucks, Oxon and Berks, it so happens, is by default, not in law but in practice. The chief constable is always Gold Command—it is always the police that run it—therefore, what has happened over time and practice is that the LRF is across those three counties automatically. These sorts of things start to become habits; they start to become the way it is done and it cannot be changed, so I just want to be clear. I do not in any way understand why the lawyer should be making the decision as the chair of the panel. I do not understand why it should be the legal person who gets to determine whether the sitting should be in private. I think that is an unnecessary addition.

I would prefer the panel to be in public, but I completely understand the sensitivity, so the impact of my Amendment 933A is designed to be that they can sit in private but only for the part that directly involves the applicant. The reason for that is sensitivity to people at a very difficult time in their lives, but I do not understand why that should also apply to all the other people who have been involved at some point. Why should their interactions with the panel need to be in private? When people go behind closed doors, we start to get a lack of understanding of what is being said and of patterns. That is why, later in the Bill, I will mention other protections that I want to see. I am conscious or concerned about being a panel member effectively becoming a full-time job. That would be a bad step in this regard.

There are many other amendments that I would love to talk to, but I am conscious of the time. This is a really important moment in considering how this final safeguard will work in practice. Is it what we were expecting when the Bill arrived in this House?

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, the Clerk of the Parliaments has confirmed to me that the clerks have recorded the names of every noble Lord who was here at the start of this debate. They will be circulated to the Chief Whips, including me, and the Convenor of the Cross Benches next week.