Biography
Baroness Freeman of Steventon has engaged with health and social care issues primarily through debate speeches in the Lords, addressing topics including assisted dying, palliative care, public health, mental health, and health inequalities. Her contributions have drawn on specialist expertise, particularly regarding patient information provision in the assisted dying debate and the social determinants of health in devolution discussions. She has also raised broader public health matters such as childhood toilet-training support and environmental health factors.
Generated from their own Hansard record, below
“My Lords, as the final Back-Bench speaker in this debate, I want to speak about something that seems to be missing from His Majesty’s gracious Speech: a sense of the bigger picture and why it feels to so many as though the country “just isn’t working”.”
Record by topic
- Cancer230th of 6226.0
- Mental health603rd of 8804.0
- Public health & prevention373rd of 6884.0
- Assisted dying277th of 3712.0
- Palliative & end of life care452nd of 5682.0
- Health inequalities245th of 2882.0
- Heart disease & stroke324th of 3982.0
- Elderly care & frailty166th of 2362.0
What they’ve said
“…It is a matter of environmental well-being, mental health, physical health and all sorts of things that would not come under this. I strongly feel that guidance and using the existing clause as worded will not work for many of the purposes that the Government set out and wanted this clause to capture—all the derelict a…”
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill · 2026-04-13 · Read on Hansard ↗
“…That experience underscores Amendment 144A, which has the support of the BMA. It would make the assisted dying commissioner responsible for the provision of the personalised and balanced information that patients require when making their end-of-life decisions under the Act.”
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · 2026-02-27 · Read on Hansard ↗
“…Section 24A(5)(a) because homelessness and housing security, which are known to affect physical and mental health, would not technically fall under standards of housing. Amendment 167B would add noise pollution as one of the environmental factors in new paragraph (b).”
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill · 2026-02-04 · Read on Hansard ↗
“…many risk communication tools that were used by doctors to help calculate somebody’s prognosis, particularly of cancer, and to communicate it to patients. A standard way of communicating that prognosis was to say, “Out of 100 patients with characteristics like yours, we would expect X number to be alive in one year”, o…”
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · 2026-01-30 · Read on Hansard ↗
“I thank the Minister for that Answer. I am delighted to talk about this important subject first thing in the new year. It is not just for the health of children that it is best to potty-train early; we send about 3.6 billion single-use nappies to landfill or incineration every year in England alone.”
Toilet-training: Support for Parents · 2026-01-05 · Read on Hansard ↗
Contributions reproduced under the Open Parliament Licence.