BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.

Hello, I'm Alicia McCarthy.

Thanks for downloading the Yesterday in Parliament podcast.

On Friday the 9th of January, a leading barrister called for judges to decide cases

where terminally ill patients ask for an assisted death.

The terminally ill adults' end-of-life bill would allow adults in England and Wales with less than six months to live, the right to ask for help to end their life.

Under the original version of the legislation, the decision would have been made by a high court judge.

The bill's backers in the Commons later changed that to a three-member

panel, made up of a legal figure, a social worker and a psychiatrist. But the crossbench

or independent peer, Lord Carlyle, argued that a bigger and broader range of judges could and

should be used to make the decisions. Where do we expect difficult issues of this level of seriousness and complexity

to be tested and adjudicated upon?

Generally the answer is, in the courts, of course,

there is no comparable precedent in which a matter affecting life and death

is handed to a panel.

Lord Carlisle insisted he wasn't trying to undermine the bill.

His proposed changes were based on the assumption that it would pass,

but he wanted it to be safe.

But other peers, including a Conservative Lady Berridge,

worried about the impact on family courts,

which he said were at capacity.

And they are full of the most serious and difficult and horrid care cases.

...