The assisted dying bill could fall even after passing the House of Commons – and perhaps even without a vote on the substance of the bill in the House of Lords. We explain what is happening and what may come next.
What stage is the assisted dying bill at in the Lords?
The terminally ill adults (end of life) bill, which would legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults with less than six months to live in England and Wales, passed in the Commons earlier this year and is now in the House of Lords.
Peers are at the committee stage, which is a line-by-line review where amendments they put down are debated and voted on.
Why are things different in the Lords?
In the Commons, the speaker selects amendments for debate and vote. That is not the case in the Lords, where the committee stage requires members to debate each amendment group by group, so it can take a long time over limited sitting days. Peers could simply run out of time before reaching the point of final votes on the bill’s substance.
In practice, the biggest risk to any bill in the Lords is simply delaying its passage rather than voting it down – there is no fixed end date for bills at committee stage.
For government bills, the government will normally make time, but that is less likely for private members’ bills. To obstruct a bill, peers can make it impossible to finish before the parliamentary session ends.
What are opponents doing to slow down the bill?
Peers have submitted an extraordinary number of amendments, more than 1,100. Many of them are on important issues worthy of scrutiny – from eating disorders to prevention of coercion.
They come from some of the most passionate opponents of the bill, including the peers Tanni Grey-Thompson, a former Paralympic athlete, and Ilora Finlay, a palliative care expert. But proponents of the bill have also blamed a number of Tory peers for what they see as some time-wasting amendments such as enforcing pregnancy tests, even on elderly men.
Why is this constitutionally controversial?
The Lords will need to pass the bill before the end of the parliamentary session, which will probably be in spring 2026. Under the Salisbury convention, it is widely held that peers should not ultimately reject a bill that was promised in the governing party’s election manifesto. This does not apply to assisted dying, which is a private member’s bill.
But many peers – including those opposed to the bill – believe it would be democratically improper for the Lords to oust a bill that had passed the elected house with a significant majority and which is supported by the majority of public opinion according to polling.
Others say there is nothing constitutionally binding on the Lords to pass the bill, which was never put to a democratic vote by being tested as a manifesto commitment.
What has been done to try to keep the bill moving?
The government chief whip in the Lords, Roy Kennedy, has arranged extra sitting days to give the chamber more time for detailed scrutiny. More still may be required but unless substantial progress is made or a change of tactics comes from opponents it looks unlikely the bill will reach a vote at third reading.
What will happen next?
There are more weeks of debate to come where peers will keep going through groups of amendments in committee stage.
If the bill does run out of time, and automatically falls, there is a nuclear option available to backers of the bill to use the Parliament Act to carry it over into the next session.
It would be unprecedented to do this with a private member’s bill – and would probably require the government to either adopt the bill or for another MP to adopt the bill in the next private members’ bill ballot as long as it is identical to the one passed by the Commons already.
