Is Lord Hermer fit to be Attorney General?
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 24 April 2026
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The long-debated assisted dying bill is expected to fail in the House of Lords today – described by the bill's leading advocate Lord Falconer as failing 'not on its merits' but 'due to procedural wrangling'. Natasha Feroze speaks to Tim Shipman and James Heale about whether that is a fair description of the bill. Plus the Telegraph investigation into Attorney General Lord Hermer's previous roles taking legal action against British troops who served in Iraq and what this means for his suitability to his role in government.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, The Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. |
| 0:11.1 | I'm Natasha Froes and I'm joined by Tim Shipman and James Heel. |
| 0:15.2 | Well, the assisted dying bill is expected to die a death, as Tim's just said in the Lords. |
| 0:23.3 | And Lord Faulkner has described it as failing due to procedural wrangling, not due to failing on its own merits. Tim, is that fair? |
| 0:31.5 | I don't think so, because there was quite a strong body of support for this legislation when it first came out. |
| 0:38.8 | There's quite a few people who, in the Commons, and to a degree in the Lords, I think, |
| 0:43.2 | thought in principle, this might be the sort of humane way to go. |
| 0:47.8 | But I think when a lot of people saw that bill, they then realised that the practicalities of it |
| 0:53.1 | were much more complicated and difficult than they had imagined. |
| 0:56.9 | And in the end, the bill got attacked from left and right. |
| 0:59.4 | You know, you had the sort of civil liberties crew objecting to some of the implications for old people |
| 1:06.2 | and the kind of religious conservatives on the right who objected to it for moral reasons. |
| 1:12.3 | And in the end, a big enough sort of head of steam was built up that this has been stopped |
| 1:16.1 | in its tracks. And there's lots of reasons why, you know, the bill is dying. It's partly |
| 1:21.0 | because it's flawed. It's partly because it's run out of time. But the reason it's run out |
| 1:24.9 | of time is because we're in that period of wash-up where the government has to decide what legislation, you know, keeps going and what |
| 1:32.4 | doesn't. And enough amendments have been foot forward. Nobody in government wants to devote |
| 1:37.3 | government time to this. So it's failed ultimately because, you know, the government has not |
| 1:43.2 | given it time. And we already see that, you know, the government has not given it time. |
| 1:48.1 | And we already see that, you know, procedural shenanigans are afoot. |
| 1:53.8 | Charlie Faulkner is talking about putting up exactly the same bill as a private member's bill in the House of Commons in the new session. |
| 1:59.0 | And they think they can Parliament act this through, which would force the hand of the House of Lords in due course, as long as the bill is identical to the one that's on the table at the moment. |
... |
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