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A former Labour minister has insisted the assisted dying bill has not reached “the end of the road”, as the legislation appears set to run out of time after organised filibustering.
Charlie Falconer, who has been trying to steer the bill through the House of Lords, spoke after it was confirmed that the government would not giving the bill further debate time in the Lords, where there are less than six days of debate left.
Labour’s chief whip in the Lords, Roy Kennedy, told a parliamentary committee this week that the government would not give the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill more time before the end of the parliamentary session in May, when any legislation not yet passed automatically falls. Multiple extra days of debate have already been added in the Lords.
Lord Falconer and others including Esther Rantzen, one of the bill’s highest-profile supporters, have been scathing of how opponents in the Lords have acted.
Falconer said: “The Lords prides itself on focusing on the things that matter and that most certainly is not what’s been going on here. The tragedy is that a small number of people in the Lords are blocking a bill that has passed in the Commons.”
He added: “It’s not the end of the road, because the Parliament Act allows it to go through to the next session, and I’m sure that is what will happen.”
He insisted peers should be taking note of decisions made by elected chambers, including Jersey’s States Assembly which has given final approval to a bill to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults who live on the island.
Members of the States Assembly voted by 32 to 16 on Thursday in favour of the bill, which will now need royal assent before it becomes law. Falconer said: “You’ve got the Commons, the Jersey parliament and the Isle of Man parliament all passing it, and it’s the Lords that are blocking it in England and Wales.”
Simon Opher, one of the Labour MPs on the bill committee who undertook its original scrutiny before the Commons vote, said “archaic filibustering tactics” were being used to frustrate the bill’s progression by “a small group of unelected peers, many of whom were rejected at the ballot box at the last election.”
He called on the government to bring forward changes “so that peers can never again block a bill which has received approval from the Commons. A bill which has already been scrutinised intensely and has popular support amongst the public and the elected chamber.
“This bill will return in the next parliament and supporters will invoke the parliament act to get it through,” Opher said. “This is also a dark day for the House of Lords and for our democracy. We cannot allow our democracy to be dictated by an unelected chamber.”
MPs and peers who back the assisted dying bill have been largely resigned since last month to it being “near impossible” to get it passed in the Lords in time because of procedural obstacles used by its opponents.
Supporters of the bill, including its sponsor, Kim Leadbeater, held intense discussions with the government to find ways to move it to a vote in the Lords. With progress so slow, experts and MPs believe it is unlikely the legislation will even be put to a vote before the end of the session in May.
The bill would legalise assisted dying in England and Wales for people with a terminal diagnosis and with less than six months to live.
If it fails as expected, the bill’s provisions could be resurrected in the next session of parliament, and proponents say its passage could be much speedier, without the need to go through lengthy debates.
Rantzen accused some peers of “blatant sabotage”. Speaking to Sky News on Thursday, she said: “This is a handful of peers putting down 1,200 amendments not to scrutinise the bill, which is their job, but to block it.”
