B

Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 30 January 2026

Debate

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Contribution

My Lords, I will make a very quick point. I was not expecting to speak on this, so I apologise for not being prepared. When I was at Cambridge, I worked on many risk communication tools that were used by doctors to help calculate somebody’s prognosis, particularly of cancer, and to communicate it to patients. A standard way of communicating that prognosis was to say, “Out of 100 patients with characteristics like yours, we would expect X number to be alive in one year”, or five years, or whatever. I do not think it is unreasonable for us to be asking what “reasonable” means in terms of the number out of 100 who would survive at, say, six months.

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