B

Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 24 April 2026

Debate

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Contribution

My Lords, my mother-in-law died from motor neurone disease a couple of years ago. She was a primary school headmistress, and she took firm control of her life throughout it. Three weeks before she died, she called a multidisciplinary team meeting of all the various clinicians, including the palliative care team, and her family to express her wishes very clearly. She had reached the point where she could not move other than her face. She could not breathe without a CPAP mask for more than a few minutes, and life was intolerable. She told us that she intended to die in three weeks’ time. That was an assisted death to the layman. It was completely legal because she could still speak. Three weeks later she told her nurse to take her mask off, she asked the nurse to give her a sedative and she passed away completely peacefully. That has completely shaped my view. As my noble friend Lord Markham set out so much more eloquently than I could throughout the course of this Bill, we have an unregulated system that is scary and unfair, so I am in favour of this Bill.

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