B

Baroness Cass (CB)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 6 February 2026

Debate

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Contribution

I would never come at the noble and learned Lord, for whom I have the greatest respect. We de facto have to make changes to the Mental Capacity Act in the application of this, because, where a person does not have capacity, you make a best interests decision, but, clearly, we are not doing that in this case, so we are already deviating from how the Mental Capacity Act would work normally in relation to medical procedures. Where you think the medical procedure is the right thing, either the patient makes that decision or someone else would make it for them in their best interest, so we are already deviating. Secondly, people will be trained specifically to carry out this work, so we have four years to train people to do this appropriately. I do not think slightly different training in this setting, compared to capacity in other situations, would be too burdensome for practitioners.

More from Baroness Cass (CB)

Other recent Hansard contributions by the same speaker.

About Hansard

Hansard is the official verbatim record of proceedings in the UK Parliament. Every word spoken in the Commons and Lords is recorded and published — this page is a single contribution from that record.

Partner sites