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Assisted dying bill - special series #18: A conversation with the Bill’s sponsor, Lord Falconer of Thoroton - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 115

14 Nov 2025
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In this episode, we are joined by Lord Falconer, the Labour Peer steering the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill through the House of Lords. Although he has attempted to legislate for assisted dying several times before, this is the first occasion he is working with a bill that has already cleared the House of Commons. In a wide-ranging conversation, he explains why this issue has driven him for more than a decade and assesses the Bill’s prospects of becoming law.

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Lord Falconer sets out why he believes the current legal framework for assisted dying is “unfit for purpose” and argues that while the Lords should scrutinise the Bill thoroughly, it should not overturn a measure endorsed by elected MPs. He warns against attempts to filibuster the legislation and against adding so many safeguards that the system becomes impossible for terminally ill people to use.

The discussion tackles several of the Bill’s most contested provisions: the role of Coroners and Medical Examiners in reviewing assisted deaths; how mental capacity should be assessed; who should approve the drugs used in assisted dying; and whether an appeal process is needed for applicants who are refused. We also explore the number of delegated powers in the Bill, how an assisted dying service might operate in practice, and how it would be funded.

Lord Falconer also reflects on the parliamentary timetable. He is confident there is enough time for the Lords to complete their scrutiny and for legislative “ping-pong” between the Commons and the Lords to reconcile any changes to the text – and he predicts that most Peers will resist any attempt to stop the Bill through deliberate time-wasting.

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Our guest

Lord Falconer of Thoroton. ©

Lord Falconer of Thoroton

Lord Falconer of Thoroton

Charlie Falconer was appointed to the House of Lords in 1997 as Lord Falconer of Thoroton. After serving as a junior minister he joined the Cabinet in 2003 as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, overseeing reforms to the ancient role of the Lord Chancellor. In 2007, as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State at the newly created Ministry of Justice, he left the Government when Tony Blair stepped down as Prime Minister. In 2014, he introduced the Assisted Dying Bill (2014-15) in the House of Lords, though it fell for lack of parliamentary time after two Committee sittings. In June 2025, he took charge of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill in the Lords after its passage through the Commons under its sponsor Kim Leadbeater MP. A barrister by profession he is currently a partner at the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. His son Hamish Falconer has been a Labour MP and junior minister since July 2024.

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Transcript

Please note, this transcript is automatically generated. There may consequently be minor errors and the text is not formatted according to our style guide. If you wish to reference or cite the transcript copy below, please first check against the audio version above. Intro: [00:00:00] You are listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society production supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk/pm.

Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.

Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy. And welcome to the latest in our special series of podcasts, tracing the progress of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, the Bill that would legalise assisted dying in England and Wales.

Ruth Fox: And this week we're in the rather magnificent law offices of Gibson Dunn in Temple in London, overlooking the Thames, and we're joined by Lord Falconer, the former Lord Chancellor, Labour Peer and longtime advocate of assisted dying, but he's the co-sponsor now with Kim Leadbeater, of the assisted dying Bill.

It's arrived in the Lords and he'll be taking it through its next stages. So Mark and I are here with Lord Falconer. Welcome to the podcast.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: Thank you very [00:01:00] much. I'm very glad to be here and I'm very glad you are here.

Ruth Fox: So, we just want to explore where we are with the Bill and what happens next.

Mark D'Arcy: But my first thought is, this is, I don't know, your third, fourth, fifth attempt to get an assisted dying Bill through the House of Lords. Why is this an issue that matters so much to you? Because there's obviously personal conviction behind this.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: I have personal conviction behind it from my own experience, but also the more you go into the issue, the more you discover how incredibly unfit for purpose the current law is. So the law at the moment makes it a crime to assist anybody to commit suicide. That means, for example, if you want to accompany somebody you love to Switzerland, where it's lawful, buying the tickets to take them to Switzerland, knowing that their purpose is to take their own life at Dignitas, that's a crime which has a maximum [00:02:00] punishment of 14 years. The Director of Public Prosecutions has indicated over years that he won't prosecute people if they're motivated by compassion, but he's absolutely clear that if, for example, you're a medically qualified person and you helped somebody you love to die, then he would prosecute you because it's only amateur assistance that he's prepared to authorise so you have a completely guarded system, effectively only available to people who've got the energy, the wherewithal, and the money to go abroad. Or as so very often happens, people who are willing to take their own life without any assistance so that they don't involve their relatives.

Stuart Broad, the well-known cricketer's father, Chris Broad, who was himself a famous cricketer and an umpire, his wife was ill, she hoarded pills, she took the [00:03:00] pills and the first that her husband knew it was happening was an email from her saying she'd done it. She was absolutely determined that he should not in any way be implicated. Because the number of people who've spoken to me and said, it's not just that I lost my loved one, but when I came back from Switzerland, I was then investigated by the police. It took months. The police were incredibly sympathetic. But the burden over my head of having a police investigation going on was terrible and the law needs to change.

Mark D'Arcy: And you talked about your personal experience in this. Is this a relative, a close friend?

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: Do you mind if I don't talk about that?

Mark D'Arcy: I understand, it's not always an easy thing to talk about. I'm sure you've encountered so many people during the course of this who've wanted to make the case for assisted dying because of their own circumstances, but you've also encountered, as you become the proponent of this, lots of people who are instinctively and in principle very, very opposed to it. Full transcript →

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