The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill will enter its sixth day of the Committee Stage in the House of Lords on Friday, but Lord Falconor of Thoroton (pictured) has warned the legislation could fail through lack of time after Lords tabled over 1000 amendments during previous sittings.
Amendments have been organised into 84 groups, with just 12 debated in the first five sittings. Nine further sitting Fridays have been scheduled for consideration of the bill between now and 24 April, but at the current rate of progress the additional days will not be sufficient to complete consideration of the 84 groups of amendments.
Last Thursday, Lord Falconer successfully moved a motion proposing that further time be provided for consideration of the bill to enable it to be returned to the House of Commons “in reasonable time before the end of the current parliamentary session”.
“’The assisted dying bill commands strong views,” Lord Falconor said, and “is of huge public interest in terms of not only its content but its progress through our parliament – and not least how we in this House conduct our scrutiny of it.”
“Over 1,000 amendments in committee have been tabled, arranged into approximately 84 groups. So far, we have spent in total some 32 hours in this House scrutinising the Bill, and we have another 50 hours scheduled.
“However, in four days of committee – about 17 hours – we have considered only 10 groups. If we continue at the rate we are going, this House will fail to complete the process of scrutiny.
“We will reach no conclusions on the Bill as to how it should be amended or whether it should return to the Commons.
“Instead, the Bill will fail through lack of time – this despite the fact that it came to this House in June of last year after extensive scrutiny in the Commons and received in this House an unopposed second reading after a two-day debate with 110 speakers.”
Following the debate to discuss the motion, the government said the business managers and whips from each of the main parties in the House would meet this week to discuss how best to find additional time for the bill.
However, the government chief whip made clear that time that would otherwise be allocated to government legislation would not be diverted to the assisted dying bill. Options to extend the time for the bill include longer sitting times on Fridays, morning sittings between Mondays and Wednesdays, further sitting days, or Thursday sittings that would otherwise be used for non-government business.
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill would allow adults in England and Wales with a prognosis of less than six months to live to be provided with assistance to end their lives, subject to eligibility criteria and conditions. The private member’s bill was introduced in the House of Commons by Kim Leadbeater (Labour MP for Spen Valley).
Image credit: © House of Lords / photography by Roger Harris
One Response
Shame on the House of Lords if the headline proves correct.
Multiple surveys show that in excess of 70% of the adult population support the bill. If it runs out of time due to obstruction by various minority groups in an unelected House then it will clearly be time to ensure that both houses are accountable to the electorate in future.