Introduction
On Friday 24 April, after 18 months of intense scrutiny and extensive debate, the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill finally ended its legislative journey without passing into law.
The bill was effectively filibustered during committee stage in the Lords, where the copious number of amendments laid by peers prior to the prorogation of Parliament led to it running out of time for further debate.
This blog explores if there is a future for the assisted dying bill, detailing developments with the bill prior to the Lords, and outlining potential avenues to bring back the legislation in a future parliamentary session.
State of Play
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, known as the Assisted Dying Bill, is a Private Members Bill (PMB) introduced by Kim Leadbeater. The bill was introduced to Parliament in October 2024 and underwent more than 100 hours of debate and scrutiny as it progressed through the House of Commons.
The legislation had some high-profile supporters, including the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, as well as opponents, including Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting. The highly contentious bill – which would give terminally ill, mentally competent adults with less than six months to live the choice of an assisted death in England and Wales – was passed by a cross-party majority of 23 during a free vote in the Commons in June 2025.
Following this, progress on the bill stalled. The bill received record levels of interest in the House of Lords, with over 200 peers signing up to speak during its second reading, so this had to take place over two days. Furthermore, over 1,200 amendments had been tabled by the time the bill began its committee stage in November 2025, believed to be a record high for a backbenchers’ bill.
The length of committee stage depends on the number of amendments laid. The Government Whips’ Office originally proposed four days for the bill’s committee stage. However, due to the extraordinarily high number of amendments, the Lords set aside every sitting Friday until the end of the parliamentary session to consider the bill – 13 days in total – with extended sitting hours on those days.
Despite this, the number of amendments led the bill to fall without a vote on Friday 24 April, with the Lords having debated fewer than half of them.
In response to the Lords derailing the bill, Leadbeater said, “MPs took this decision having entered into this debate in a really serious, considered manner. They really engaged with constituents. I had colleagues in tears in my office talking this through because it is such an emotional issue, and the House of Lords are behaving as though none of that ever happened”.
Options for Resurrection
Unlike a government bill, a PMB cannot be carried over to the next parliamentary session. Unless the bill receives royal assent before Parliament is prorogued on 30 April, it will fall.
While supporters and opponents of the assisted dying bill have accepted that the legislation will not become law in the current parliamentary session, Leadbeater and Lord Falconer of Thoroton (the bill’s sponsor in the Lords) have suggested that the bill could be reintroduced in the next parliamentary session.
The bill could be reintroduced in the next parliamentary session as another PMB, if a backbench MP high up in the ballot opts to introduce new legislation to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales. Lord Falconer claims that up to 150 backbench MPs are willing to put Leadbeater’s law in their own name if they are given the chance.
Another option for progressing the bill would be to force it through Parliament, despite the opposition of the Lords. This would require the Commons to use the Parliament Acts to bypass the Lords. However, this would require a majority of MPs to support forcing the bill through in or near its current form. For this to have a chance of succeeding, the Government would likely need to adopt the bill or at least actively support it, which it decided not to do during this session, taking a neutral stance on the issue.
The Government could also introduce its own bill, but it has not yet indicated any intention to do so. A Government source has said using the Parliament Acts would be deeply controversial and suggested setting up a Royal Commission – or independent public inquiry – to examine the proposals in Leadbeater’s bill.
Use of the Parliament Act
The Parliament Acts are two pieces of legislation, passed in 1911 and amended in 1949, that limit the role of the House of Lords in the legislative process by removing its veto over legislation. The Government can use the Parliament Acts to pass legislation without the consent of the House of Lords – but only if certain specific conditions are met.
The conditions which need to be met are:
- The bill has been rejected by the House of Lords in two successive parliamentary sessions – meaning either that the bill has not completed its passage in the Lords; or that the Lords decline to progress the bill; or that the Lords has insisted on amendments that the Commons refuses.
- At least one year has elapsed between the time in the first parliamentary session that the Commons gave the bill its second reading and the time in the second successive parliamentary session that the Commons gave the bill its third reading.
- The Lords received the bill at least one month before the end of the two successive parliamentary sessions.
- The bill does not change between the two parliamentary sessions, other than:
- changes that are needed because of the time elapsed during the process, or
- changes to reflect amendments made by the Lords in the first parliamentary session, even if they were not agreed by the Commons (but whether to include any such changes in the bill in the second Session is entirely at the discretion of the Government).
The procedures only apply to public bills rather than private bills (legislation that applies to specific individuals or organisations rather than the general public). The assisted dying bill is a public bill because its provisions change the general law.
Likewise, it does not apply to a public bill that was first introduced in the House of Lords rather than the House of Commons, or to a bill that attempts to prolong a Parliament’s duration beyond five years.
If the assisted dying bill were to be reintroduced in the upcoming parliamentary session and the Commons were to pass this bill in identical form to the version it agreed at third reading in the current parliamentary session, and the Lords again failed to pass it in that session, then the Government could invoke the Parliament Act to send it directly for royal assent.
Importantly, the version of the bill introduced in the 2026-7 Session must be identical to the Commons version agreed at Third Reading in the 2024-6 Session, except where limited, Speaker-certified amendments are permitted.
Ruth Fox, Director of the Hansard Society, estimated that the idea to pass the bill using the Parliament Acts has a “50-50” chance of success, adding that “it is feasible but it will be challenging to line up the timings and the procedural mechanisms”.
The power to pass legislation in this way under the Parliament Acts has been used very sparingly. Seven bills have been passed using the powers under section 2 of the Parliament Act. While the powers have rarely been used, the threat of using them can be encouragement enough to get the Lords to pass a bill or back down.
On three occasions, bills have been introduced in a second successive parliamentary session to potentially allow the Parliament Acts to be used, only for the Lords to agree to the bills. The Parliament Act includes a provision for the Commons, when it sends the bill to the Lords in the second session, to send alongside it a list of suggested amendments indicating the areas in which the Commons is prepared to compromise, while retaining its power to override a Lords veto.
Future of the Bill?
The past 18 months have seen over 220 hours of emotive debate on the issues of assisted dying, with supporters of the bill accusing some peers of using delaying tactics to block the bill’s progress, while critics have argued it did not have sufficient safeguards to protect vulnerable people. Leadbeater affirmed that the legislation “was the most robust and safest piece of assisted dying legislation in the world”.
While the future of the bill is currently uncertain, supporters are reportedly confident that the legislation will return in the next session of Parliament, which begins on 13 May 2026.
Leadbeater met civil servants in the weeks leading up to the bill falling to discuss her plan to resurrect it, which she intends to put in motion within weeks of a new parliamentary session starting.