More assisted suicide concerns

Peers have been considering an amendment that would move assisted dying from a panel-based system to a court-based system, as originally proposed.

And during the fifth day of debate on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, Lord McCrea, an Evangelical Christian, highlighted the fundamental issue: “No one can state categorically that a person has only six months to live.”

He added: “As a minister in the [Presbyterian] Church for 50 years, I have known numerous people who have been told that they have only six months to live, but they lived for years after that. Therefore, while it has been suggested that [assisted dying] applies only to those who have six months to live, we do not know that, and we cannot give that assurance.”

Introducing Amendment 25, Lord Carlile said: “That a judge should be involved is self-evidently appropriate and what we should expect, given that third-party participation in a death would otherwise involve the offence of murder.”

Lord McCrea described the issue of judicial involvement as “legislative hokey-cokey” and “gives the impression that no one has worked out how to resolve the dilemma at the heart of the bill – that the necessary level of safeguarding that such a bill needs ultimately renders it unworkable”.

In another development, the House of Lords has agreed to allocate more time to scrutinise the bill.

The bill must pass all parliamentary stages before the end of the current session, expected in Spring 2026, or it fails. However, more than 1,000 amendments to the bill have been proposed by peers and, at its current rate, it will fail.