Assisted dying bill fails to make it through House of Lords
The assisted dying bill has run out of time in the House of Lords and will not become law in England and Wales.
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which passed in the House of Commons last year, amassed a record number of amendments, and earlier this year its sponsor Lord Falconer had expressed deep concerns about the possibility of its passing.
After passing in the House of Commons, the bill faced delays in the House of Lords due to more 1,200 amendments preventing it from progressing.
Today, as the bill ran out of time, Lord Falconer said supporters of assisted dying felt ‘betrayed by the system’ which meant that peers were able to ‘serve their own agenda rather than being representative of people in the general population’.
He said: ‘We’ve had time to debate all the issues that had to be debated at appropriate length. Yet at the end of this session, having completed the committee stage of only seven out of 59 clauses after 13 days of committee, we have reached no conclusion on any part of the bill, or on the question “should we return the bill to the Commons?”’
Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, who had introduced the bill to the House of Commons, said that its failing was ‘deeply disappointing’ for many people.
She said: ‘After passing the House of Commons with strong support from elected members of Parliament, the bill has faced significant delays in the unelected House of Lords, with a large number of amendments from a small minority of peers preventing it from progressing on time.
‘The scenes outside of Parliament this week, probably the larges ever demonstration in support of assisted dying, were truly inspirational, and send a very clear message. This issue is not going away.
‘While today’s is not the outcome we hoped for, the strength of public support and the voices behind it mean that this debate will continue.’
Speaking to Pulse earlier this year, former RCGP chair and now-peer Baroness Gerada of Kennington said the number of amendments to the bill demonstrated some peers were intent on ‘strangling’ the legislation before a vote on it could take place.
The BMA has maintained a ‘neutral’ position on assisted dying but has emphasised the need for ‘absolute freedom of choice for doctors as to whether they participate or not’.
And the RCGP moved to a position of ‘neither supporting nor opposing’ assisted dying after a vote of its council members in March 2025.
Before the bill passed the House of Commons, a Pulse survey exclusively revealed just under one in four GPs would be prepared to be involved in assisted dying to its completion.
England’s chief medical officer previously said GPs would require additional training to support patients if they were to be involved in assisted dying.
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READERS' COMMENTS [2]
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As much as I opposed this highly flawed Bill, the fact that a bunch of unelected peers could filibuster legislation voted through several times by elected politicians is a sad indictment of our sclerotic democracy.
The Lords had an opportunity to tighten up the glaring loopholes and avoid the slippery slope towards a dystopian Canadian-style state-sponsored euthanasia programme. Now this dreadful Bill could be brought back in its unaltered form by MPs and voted through without interference by Peers.
That a tiny minority of lords could table over 1200 amendments to filibuster and stop this bill is a disgrace to our parliamentary system and the UK is fast becoming a country where ‘stuff cannot get done’. The cruelty of the ‘Antis’ letting some poor patients suffer horribly is shameful. That the baroness who shall be nameless but was a hospice consultant should have been one of the main blockers really disgusts me. She claims that with enough money the hospices would make this bill irrelevant is quite simply a lie. In countries where assisted death is legal 80% of those requesting it are already under hospice care.
This issue will return to parliament sooner or later but its a movment that is happening elsewhere in the world and it will come to the UK eventually when our hopeless governance catches up. How sad and depressing!