November 16, 2025
UK Assisted dying bill ‘risks running out of time
Assisted dying bill ‘risks running out of time to become law’ after Lords delays
The UK assisted dying bill has entered it’s committee stage with around 1,000 amendments put forward by members of the House of Lords; a record number of proposed changes prompting fears they will hold up the historic law change
The assisted dying Bill risks running out of time to become law, the Lords has been warned, after a record breaking number of changes were put forward.
Almost 1,000 amendments to the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill have been proposed by members of the House of Lords.
Seven opponents of the bill have submitted 579 amendments between them. The bill to take the UK out of the European Union, had 820 amendments in total.
Terminally ill campaigners accused the Lords of trying to sabotage the bill, which has already been passed by the Commons and has just entered the committee stage in the Lords.
More than 100 terminally ill people and bereaved families have written to members of the House of Lords urging them to ensure that the voices of dying people remain central as the Bill enters Committee Stage.
Louise Shackleton, 58, from North Yorkshire, who had to wait 10 months to find out she wasn’t to be prosecuted after going to Dignitas with her MND suffering husband Antony, 59, accused them of using ‘tactics’ to try and block the Bill.
“I spent time in the House of Lords today and quite frankly I was astounded by the behaviour of some peers,” she told The Mirror.
“I believe that there are tactics at play to run the Terminally ill Adults Bill out of time scales as a form of sabotage. The sabotage is being enacted in plain sight, the people have spoken and are being silenced by some elitist peers.”
Baroness Scotland of Asthal told the Lords on Friday: “All of us care deeply about those who suffer, deeply about those who face a diagnosis about the end of their lives and we have to get this right.
“So I would ask the house to be kind to each other, to listen, to understand that the pain that is suffered – on all sides – is real and we are entrusted to do something quite extraordinary, once in a generation and we cannot fail…”
Before the debate began, Ed, 82, who has been diagnosed with an aggressive and inoperable brain tumour and told she has weeks to live, spoke out in favour of the assisted dying bill.
She told Sky News:
“I feel I should have a choice. I feel that it should be me who who says; ‘Well I think I’ll get off this bus now. I’ve reached where I want to go to, and I’m quite happy. I’ve had a good life…
“Dying shouldn’t be a horrific thing. I think most of us aren’t afraid of death, we’re afraid of what we have to go though before death.”
Peers have now had the first of four Fridays devoted to line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill after the Dignity in Dying group, which campaigns for a change in the law, warned them “the risk of deliberate time-wasting is clear and profoundly unfair”.
But a number of peers told Friday’s debate they can only support Bills which are “legislatively fit to be passed”, describing this one as “demonstrably flawed”.
The historic Bill will become law only if both the House of Commons and the Lords agree on the final drafting of the legislation – with approval needed before spring when the current session of Parliament ends.
Baroness Gisela Stuart said there are “so many flaws” with the Bill in its current form “that I don’t think this House, however long we debate it, can actually get it to a stage where it is legislatively fit to be passed, and that is our role”.
She told her colleagues on the Lords’ red benches: “We should not vote for anything that cannot legislatively be properly implemented.”
But campaigners fear the bill will be delayed because the House of Lords has ‘flooded’ the bill with amendments.
A dying music teacher, says if the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is blocked because of “parliamentary fun and games’ he will be “heartbroken”
Nathaniel Dye, from east London, who was made an MBE for his campaigning work, said: “Twenty people a day die in unmanaged pain. I fear this law will come too late for me and my family. I’d rather die peacefully for everyone’s sake.”
He warned if the bill, backed by most of the public, is blocked, the Lords could be finished.
“Given that the bill has been voted through the Commons with a substantial majority … to go against this could signal an existential crisis for the House of Lords as we know it.
“It strikes me that all these amendments are putting up barriers. It would have given me some peace and a little bit of calm in my last weeks .”
Nat has stage 4 incurable bowel cancer which has spread to his liver, lungs and brain. He is living with 50 tumours.