September 16, 2025

Former PM Theresa May opposes ‘licence to kill’ Bill

Assisted dying: Former PM Theresa May opposes ‘licence to kill’ Bill reports The Standard

Conservative former prime minster Theresa May told the packed red benches of the upper chamber in Parliament that she fears the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill does not have enough safeguards and could be used to cover up medical mistakes.

Baroness May, one of around 190 speakers expected to have their say on the Bill across a two-day debate, said she is worried about the impact on people with disabilities, chronic illness and mental health problems as “there is a risk that legalising assisted dying reinforces the dangerous notion that some lives are less worth living than others”.

The former Tory leader said: “There is a danger that this could be used as a cover-up. A cover-up for mistakes made in hospital, or for perhaps a hospital-acquired illness, infection, which has led to an increased likelihood of death.

“I have a friend who calls it the ‘licence to kill’ Bill.”

She referred to it as an “assisted suicide Bill” and said it “effectively says suicide is OK”.

Leading support for the Bill, former lord chancellor and justice secretary Lord Charlie Falconer said the current law is “confused” and “causes terrible suffering and lacks compassion and safeguards”.

Those backing a change in the law have repeatedly said it is not acceptable that desperate terminally ill people feel the need to end their lives in secret or go abroad to Dignitas alone, for fear that loved ones will be prosecuted for helping them.

Childline founder Dame Esther Rantzen, who is terminally ill, has spoken about making plans to go to the Swiss clinic and her sadness that no family would be able to accompany her in case they faced criminal investigation.

Lord Falconer said the full chamber “reflects the seriousness with which the Lords takes this issue”, adding: “This is an historic occasion.”

He warned it is not the job of peers – who, unlike MPs, are not elected by the public – to “frustrate” the Bill’s passage through Parliament.

The Labour peer said: “We must do our job in this House, and our job is not to frustrate, it is to scrutinise.”