Lords amendments stall assisted dying bill amid sabotage claims

A handful of unelected peers in the House of Lords turned the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill into a test of whether scrutiny becomes obstruction when time is the real weapon. The bill, which would let terminally ill adults in England and Wales who are expected to die within six months seek assistance to end their own lives, had already cleared the Commons by 314 votes to 291 on 20 June 2025, yet its final committee-stage debate was scheduled to end on 24 April 2026 after months of amendment warfare in the upper chamber.

The clash has centred on procedure as much as policy. Kim Leadbeater introduced the private member’s bill in the Commons on 16 October 2024, and Lord Falconer of Thoroton took it up in the Lords on 23 June 2025. By November, seven of the bill’s loudest opponents, Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, Baroness Grey-Thompson, Lord Carlile of Berriew, Baroness Coffey, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, Lord Moylan and Lord Sandhurst, had tabled 587 amendments between them, while broader tallies later put the bill above 940 amendments before committee stage and close to 1,300 by April 2026. Esther Rantzen, one of its most prominent supporters, accused peers of “blatant sabotage” in February and said about 1,200 amendments were being used to block it.

Supporters say that volume is not ordinary scrutiny but a clock-running tactic aimed at exhausting a bill that cannot be carried over into the next parliamentary session. Opponents reject that charge and argue they are tightening a dangerous and flawed proposal, clause by clause, on a matter of life and death. The government has stayed neutral on the principle of assisted dying, while saying it still has a duty to ensure any law is workable, effective and enforceable. In practice, the Lords’ self-regulating rules have given peers far more room than the Commons to stretch debate across 16 scheduled committee days.

The political pressure has not faded because public support has remained broad. YouGov found 75% of Britons support assisted dying in principle, and 73% backed the bill when shown its safeguards and criteria, numbers that have strengthened the argument from campaigners that Parliament is not answering a fringe demand but a mainstream one. That is why the fight now reaches beyond this bill’s immediate fate: if the Lords’ procedure can bury a measure with such backing, supporters say the next battle may be whether ministers and MPs try again, possibly through a future session or other rare parliamentary route.