Baroness Andrews (Lab)

My Lords, I think it is right, as my noble friend Lord Rooker said, that this clause stand part debate is an opportunity for a reset and a rethink about how we are approaching the Bill and the way we are prioritising the arguments. Where I slightly take issue with my noble friend is that I do not think it is helpful to apportion blame. We are where we are with this Bill now, and we are all under the clear impression and instruction that, if the Committee wants to change the Bill, whether those who oppose it or those who support it, we have to get it to Report so that we can do that and then send it back to the Commons improved and amended. On the question of delegation, I worked with my noble friend Lord Blencathra—I will call him that—on the reports on delegated legislation, and they were extremely important. What we have discovered in this Bill, as the amendments have been put forward, is that there is a difficult balance to be achieved between what goes into the Bill on the principle and the design—our task in this House is to make every Bill workable—and what has been left to delegation. As a result of the nature of the Bill, the behavioural issues that are raised by it, and the extraordinary personal and exceptional circumstances when we are dealing with people in the last months of their life—which we should never lose sight of, no matter what we are debating and how technical and process-driven it is—we have to think about the balance between what is workable because it is in the Bill and will stand in law and what has to be left to delegation going forward and therefore can be amended as circumstances change. That is the situation the Australians find themselves in. We have a lot to learn, as we have already learned, from Australian medics who have told us how they are managing the Bill and what an extraordinary benefit it has been. That is on the public record. All I would say, before my noble friend Lord Blencathra possibly opposes me, although I hope not, is that this is an opportunity to look at the amendments that are coming forward and the priorities we are attaching to them and whether we can triage them in some way. My noble friend Lord Rooker is right that a lot of these early amendments can fall away, because we have addressed the principle. Can we focus on what it will now take to agree to improve the Bill, so that we can have shared trust across the Committee that this is about improving the Bill and not delaying it to the point that it will never become law?