Leadbeater's assisted dying bill to fall: What now?

Over the last couple of weeks, proponents and opponents of assisted dying in the House of Lords have both publicly acknowledged that Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill will not be passed by the end of the parliamentary session.

Since the bill was voted through by majority in the House of Commons in June last year, the Lords have been debating the thousands of amendments put forward by a small number of peers.

Those opposed to the bill argue that these numerous amendments are necessary as the current bill is unsafe and unworkable without them. Those in favour of the bill argue that their opponents are using underhanded parliamentary tactics to run down the clock – something akin to the American filibuster.

Either way, both sides of the debate now acknowledge that, due to the number of amendments, the Lords will run out of time to debate them all by the end of the parliamentary session in May. This will effectively be the end of the Leadbeater bill.

The only obvious mechanism for the Leadbeater bill to return in the next parliamentary session is if the winner of the Private Members’ Bill ballot chooses to bring forward an exact replica of the bill to the House of Commons.

If the bill passes the Commons again, the Commons could then use the Parliament Act (1911), which states that if the House of Commons passes the exact same bill in consecutive parliamentary sessions, it can bypass the House of Lords and make the bill law.

It would be historically unprecedented to use the Parliament Act to pass a Private Members’ Bill in this way. The handful of times it has been used in the past have been for Government Bills, not Private Members’ Bills.

What now?

So what now for those of us opposed to the legalisation of assisted dying?

Firstly, I do think we can take a moment to breathe a sigh of relief and thank God that the Leadbeater bill will not become law in this parliamentary session. The tireless work of campaigners, generous giving of donors, and persistent prayers of Christians around the country have managed to put the brakes on a new law that would have threatened the lives of the vulnerable and fundamentally undermined the sanctity of life in British law. We can and should praise God for this.

Secondly, if the bill does return in the next parliamentary session, campaigners need to be very careful when appealing to constitutional convention. It would be constitutionally unprecedented to use the Parliament Act (1911) to bypass the Lords in order to pass a Private Members’ Bill such as the Assisted Dying Bill. However, it would also be pretty unprecedented for a bill that has passed third reading in the Commons to fail to become law because the Lords ran out of time to debate it. I could only find one historic example of this occurring, which was the Daylight Saving Bill (2010–12). Therefore, appealing to constitutional precedent, or accusing opponents of using underhanded parliamentary tactics to force Leadbeater’s bill through, would undoubtedly be met with accusations of hypocrisy.

Third and finally, we need to use this intervening time to continue to build the ethical case against assisted dying. Assisted dying is not going away, and even if the Leadbeater bill does not return in the next parliamentary session, it is only a matter of time before assisted dying comes back to parliament in some form. It may be years rather than months, but I am sure it will return soon. Therefore, we must use this time to cultivate conversations, build arguments and plan for the eventuality that assisted dying returns to public discourse.

Will we be able to repeat the words of Dame Cicely Saunders who pioneered palliative care: “You matter because you are you. And you matter until the end of your life”?