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Lord Harper (Con)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 12 December 2025

Debate

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Contribution

That is a very helpful intervention, and I absolutely accept that. I understand that that is the way it works. Certainly, with the way the NHS works now, you can go on to the NHS app, which many noble Lords may use, access your own patient record and see all those various notifications registered. He is absolutely right that a flag would be raised; the problem is that there is no requirement in the way the Bill is drafted at the moment for that GP practice to do anything as a result of that flag being raised—none at all. I think there should be. We can come on to that, as we progress through the Bill, when we get to Clause 10. That is the point I was trying to raise. I do not want to go over my time, but I will deal briefly with the points by the noble Baroness, Lady Winterton. I agree with her. It is right that the House scrutinises the Bill properly. If you look at the number of days of debate in the House of Commons, I think there were 11 days in Committee. If you look at the normal way this House conducts itself—because we tend to do a more detailed level of scrutiny than the House of Commons—you would expect, as a rule of thumb, about 16 days of debate in Committee; then we normally have 50% of that on Report and at Third Reading. I do not disagree with her. It may be that this Bill requires more time, and that is clearly a discussion for the sponsor to have with the Government Chief Whip about making that time available. But I think the wrong response is for us to not do our jobs properly, not scrutinise the Bill and not make sure that it is a properly fit piece of legislation to get on to the statute book. That would be the wrong response. If we were to do that, we would be failing in our duty to legislate properly for the people of this country.

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