Assisted suicide bill faces termination

The proposed assisted dying legislation is doomed to fail, as no further additional time has been granted to enable full scrutiny of the draft bill and numerous amendments.

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is still at committee stage in the House of Lords, but will most likely fail in May when the current parliamentary session ends.

Assisted dying campaigners have consistently accused peers of delaying tactics (which the peers have denied); and the bill’s sponsors, Kim Leadbeater MP and Lord Falconer, had talked of invoking the Parliament Act 1911 to circumvent the Lords and force the bill through.

A CitizenGo petition urging ministers to rule out using the Parliament Act to force through the bill in the next session, signed by more than 20,000 people, was delivered to 10 Downing Street in February.

If the bill fails, it could be reintroduced into the Commons via another Private Members’ Bill (PMB) later. And in theory, the Parliament Act could then be used to over-ride the Lords. But this has never been used for a PMB, and various timing and procedural requirements might make that difficult.