Opponents of the Assisted Dying Bill in the House of Lords seem surprisingly confident of their own impending success. A small number of Peers have tabled hundreds of amendments in the hope that the Bill can simply be “talked out” – filibustered in American terms. They are determined, supported by the Church of England Bishops and feel that they have backed the Government into a corner.
Their main message is that a major law change like this should really have been a Government Bill and that leaving the donkey work to a group of backbenchers has resulted in a Bill which is complex and probably unworkable. Time to scrap it and start again.
They are deluding themselves. The Bill may not be perfect but it has taken many Parliamentary hours to get this far and no Government is simply going shrug it off as a waste of time. Such changes have historically been presented in the form of Private Members’ Bills. It was not a manifesto promise, so a Government Bill would have lacked voters’ authenticated support. And the Government itself, already under fire for its mismanagement of Parliamentary processes, is unlikely to give such an open goal to its political opponents.
The Government has in fact already demonstrated its determination to get the Bill through. It has allocated many more Lords’ sitting days to the process. The Bill will not clear the Lords until the 24th April 2026. In effect, the Government has called the opponents’ bluff.
All this can be a painful process to watch and it certainly adds power to the arguments of those who want The House of Lords to be abolished entirely. But the Bill itself, ultimately, does still seem likely to become law.
