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Lord Farmer (Con)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 24 April 2026

Debate

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Contribution

My Lords, this is a Private Member’s Bill, finally passed in the Commons with a shrinking majority of 26. I have spoken to a number of Labour MPs since, and what is possibly not known is that there was considerable pressure from No. 10 to pass the Bill. It was known that the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, supported it, and indeed there were government party Bill supporters standing at the entrance to the Lobbies taking note of who was going through. I am just passing on what Labour MPs have said to me: that they felt intimidated. There have been and still are considerable concerns about such an important matter as assisted suicide coming on the statute book through a Private Member’s Bill. It has not had pre-legislative parliamentary scrutiny, as we have heard. Committee stage in the other place was chaired by its sponsor and appeared to some to be unbalanced, and there has been no publicly available impact assessment or cost analysis by the Government.

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