Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)

My Lords, I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Lords’ Interests, which refers to the facts that I have an assistant funded by Bernard Lewis to assist me in the conduct of this Bill and that Dignity in Dying funded the printing of the literature that I sent to your Lordships in connection with the Bill. I apologise for not mentioning this in my opening speech. This has been a debate of the highest quality, probably the highest quality I have heard in 28 years in this House. Your Lordships brought passion, expertise and wisdom to the issue. I thought that every single speech that was made rose to the gravity of the occasion. I would wish to refer to every speech, but I cannot. I pay particular tribute, however, to those of your Lordships on both sides—some people have mentioned them—who have identified their own personal suffering in relation to this. I pay tribute to all of those speeches and will mention just two of them. First, the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Prentis of Banbury, was very striking. She will know that she has the wishes of the whole House with her. I also mention the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine. She, too, has the wishes of the whole House with her. The debate shows beyond doubt that this House will bring both expertise and human understanding to the important task of scrutiny that we must now undertake. I express genuinely my gratitude to your Lordships’ Constitution Committee and the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee respectively. As I indicated in my opening speech, I will be bringing forward amendments to deal with many of the recommendations that they raise. I have to say that my experience as a Minister was that both those committees frequently made recommendations of the sort that have been made here requiring changes. I very much hope that, in consultation with the Government, I will be able to make those changes. I also mention the status of this Bill. This is a Private Member’s Bill because it is a matter of conscience. No major political party agrees on whether or not it supports assisted dying, and I do not find that surprising. It has to remain a Private Member’s Bill for that reason. I should say, as my noble friend Lady Merron referred to, I have had assistance, as has my friend in the other place, the Member for Spen Valley, from the Government—civil servants and lawyers—seeking to ensure that the Bill is workable. That explains very many of the changes that have taken place. But, ultimately, this is a Private Member’s Bill and must be treated as such. I believe that the Commons was very capable and proved able to properly scrutinise this Bill. It gave the Bill 100 hours of scrutiny. At the same time in this House, we are looking at the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which, as it happens, is longer, and it got 40 hours of scrutiny. We are looking at a Bill for which, in the Commons, there were no guillotines, so every clause was debated, not just those that were reached before the guillotine fell. We are looking at a Bill that has had a very large number of Select Committees look at it. The last one reported in the Commons in March 2024. We have a job of work to do, but I earnestly ask your Lordships not to approach this Bill on the basis that it has not been properly scrutinised in the other place.