Biography
Baroness Smith of Newnham has engaged extensively with the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill through 9 debate speeches, drawing on personal experience of her father's care to raise concerns about mental capacity assessments, palliative care adequacy, and the robustness of safeguards. She has also raised dentistry access for Armed Forces personnel and reservists across multiple defence-related debates, while her remaining contributions addressed parliamentary scrutiny mechanisms and UK defence policy. Her engagement demonstrates a consistent approach of scrutinising legislation through detailed questioning while maintaining a position of principle opposition to assisted dying itself.
Generated from their own Hansard record, below
“…cannot get your dental appointment, or if you are deployed, you do not have your six-monthly check-up with your NHS dentist and you get deregistered, where does that leave you next time around? There are all sorts of questions that could be dealt with in a relatively straightforward way, as long as medical and dental p…”
Record by topic
- Assisted dying78th of 37110.0
- Learning disability & autism466th of 8996.0
- Palliative & end of life care213th of 5686.0
- Mental health603rd of 8804.0
- Unpaid carers146th of 2834.0
- Dentistry access175th of 1942.0
- Cancer503rd of 6222.0
- NHS waiting lists467th of 5342.0
- Dementia211th of 2512.0
What they’ve said
“…We came to the Bill from different perspectives. As noble Lords know, I am not in favour of the principle of assisted dying. However, my view has always been that the role of your Lordships’ House is clear: it is to scrutinise and amend legislation.”
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · 2026-04-24 · Read on Hansard ↗
“I can see a point to that, but the message I was given by the mental health practitioner who rang me from the mental health team—I think he was a psychiatrist—was basically that once somebody is in a home, these tests become much more difficult because of the nature of the environment.”
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · 2026-02-06 · Read on Hansard ↗
“…Before my father went into a nursing home, there was a period when I assumed he had dementia. He was becoming more and more vague. He was on a new medication, and over time the doctors had said, “Double the medication”, then, “Quadruple the medication”, and he became more and more vague and did not seem to know who I w…”
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · 2026-02-06 · Read on Hansard ↗
“…he came away with from speaking to a doctor on the telephone—the doctor had never met him—was, “It’s pancreatic cancer”. My father then spent weeks saying goodbye to all his relatives and friends. By the time relevant tests had been done, it was shown that he did not have pancreatic cancer.”
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · 2026-01-30 · Read on Hansard ↗
“…re is nobody to care for me, social care in my area is not adequate, the state cannot afford to fund it and the palliative care is not available”? The answers to the group the end of last week about palliative care started off a series of quite chilling responses.”
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · 2026-01-16 · Read on Hansard ↗
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