B

Baroness Gerada (CB)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 30 January 2026

Debate

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Contribution

My Lords, I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, that this issue will never be a routine tick-box exercise. Being in Tenerife rather than Torbay is the choice of the patient. If they want to spend that time there before they return to the UK and die, it is not our choice. Videos allow patients and their families to be together for those assessments. There is no ethical or clinical reason why an assisted dying request, or aspects of care included in the clauses laid out, must be face to face. What matters is capacity, choice and informed consent, not physical proximity. During Covid, I assessed thousands of patients’ capacity, consent and safeguarding issues remotely, with no evidence of increased coercion or harm. Patients can already refuse life-sustaining treatments such as renal dialysis, have feeding withdrawn or make advanced decisions to remove treatment without face-to-face legal requirements. Face-to-face assessment requirements, as laid out in these amendments, are a policy choice, not a clinical or ethical necessity. What protects patients is careful assessment, independence, documentation and review, not the distance between two chairs.

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