Parliament must ease the burden of care, not create a duty to die – By Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee

I will be among the last to put forward my opinion in the House of Lords when we conclude the Second Reading of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on Friday 19 September.

This is a moment for sober reflection: not a rehearsal of slogans, but a clear-eyed weighing of what this law would say about the kind of society we are. The Bill would permit terminally ill adults, with full mental capacity and a prognosis of six months or less to request assistance to end their life. It has already passed the Commons and is now under intense scrutiny in your House of Lords.

Supporters of the Bill speak of autonomy and compassion. But there is a story we must not ignore — the story of care, and of the small, corrosive pressures that can make “choice” anything but free. Across the country, unpaid carers give up earnings, health and nights of sleep to support those they love. They are quite simply the best among us. Yet too often those who are cared for feel a terrible internal guilt: a sense that they are a burden on family, friends and those who provide care.

That is not a theoretical worry. Evidence from jurisdictions with assisted-dying regimes shows this concern is real and rising. Oregon’s long-running Death with Dignity programme reports that – over the years captured in its datasets to 2024 – around 46.6% of people who chose assisted death cited being a “burden on family, friends/caregivers” as a reason. That figure must give us pause about the psychological context in which such a life-ending choice is made.

Our own Government’s Impact Assessment is candid about the implications for carers. It notes, chillingly, that a reported benefit of voluntary assisted dying services to unpaid carers is the reduction in time they spend providing care, and it links high-intensity unpaid caring to negative physical and mental health and employment outcomes for the carers. The assessment also quantifies the financial strain many families face for residential or home care, factors that compound the emotional pressure on the dying and their loved ones.  will not pretend caring is easy. It is exhausting and often ruinously expensive. But the moral test for the Lords is whether we will legislate in a way that intensifies those silent pressures or whether we will instead confront them. No safeguard in any Bill can fully guard against the internalised belief that one’s life is “too costly” or “too demanding.” Legalising assisted dying risks normalising that fear and offering death as an answer to problems of funding, staffing and support.

My own mother died in June this year. She received excellent palliative care in her home and in hospital. That care relieved her pain and gave her dignity.

That is the response I want us to provide for everyone — not a default to death because we failed to invest in life. I fervently wish my fellow peers will appreciate that the real challenge before Parliament is not how to help people die sooner, but how to help them live better: expanding palliative services, easing financial strain on families and properly supporting carers. If we fail to do that, we will have legislated a remedy for a problem of our own making — and that is a legacy the House of Lords should reject.

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