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Lord Empey (UUP)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 20 March 2026

Debate

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Contribution

I am delighted to hear that, but I can assure the noble Baroness that it is not a universal situation. As I was saying, 1.7 million Londoners do not have English as their first language and 300,000 do not have English at all—that is equivalent to a significantly sized city. According to the 2021 census, only 63.8% of households consisted of members who all had the same main language—I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, also mentioned the 2021 census. Some 6%, or 1.5 million households, consisted of people who had different main languages in the same house. Those figures are five years out of date, and with the surge in immigration since then, I am sure the figures are much greater. The noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, highlighted the circumstances of people with hearing difficulties. Added to that, in a traumatic situation of discussing whether a person wishes to be assisted to die, how will a patient be able to absorb such difficult information from a medical practitioner who perhaps does not have English as his first language or vice versa—a medical practitioner may have a patient whose first language is not English?

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