Supporters of assisted dying have expressed outrage after the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill failed to pass in the House of Lords, with accusations of sabotage by unelected peers. The bill, which had passed the House of Commons, would have allowed terminally ill people with less than six months to live to end their lives. Opponents, however, argue the legislation was poorly drafted and lacked necessary safeguards.
Supporters Blame Unelected Peers
Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, condemned a small group of peers for blocking the bill. She described them as "implacable opponents" who dominated debates and introduced numerous amendments to talk out the legislation. "It's absolutely shameless what a tiny group, less than 1% of the unelected upper house, has done," she said. "Their role is to scrutinise, not to block."
Hannah Slater, 38, who has terminal breast cancer, called the bill's failure "not democratic." She said, "It's devastating for people who want to be able to choose how to die when we've got a terminal illness. This choice is being taken away at the last moment. It feels really cruel and unfair."
Opponents Defend Their Actions
Tanni Grey-Thompson, a cross-bench peer and former Paralympian, rejected criticism of the 1,200 amendments added to the bill. She argued the bill was badly written and needed to be much tighter. "Our role is to look at the geeky technical stuff," she said. "It's not just a handful of people that are opposed to it." Grey-Thompson noted that some objections required multiple amendments, such as changing the term "people with disabilities" to the accepted legal term "disabled people," which needed 12 separate amendments.
Pete Donnelly, a disability rights campaigner, praised the peers' amendments, saying without them the legislation would have been "waived through" without adequate scrutiny. He described the bill as "unsafe [and] lethal" and expressed concern that assisted dying laws could later be widened to cover disabled people. He called for the bill to be reintroduced as a government bill to ensure full scrutiny.
MPs and Peers Call for Better Safeguards
Labour MP Josh Fenton-Glynn, who abstained on the bill's second reading in the Commons, said it still lacked sufficient safeguards to protect terminally ill people from coercion by relatives. "Any proponent of assisted dying would want to see a safe and workable bill, and I don't think it was that," he said. He expressed willingness to support a revised bill if its problems were addressed.
Labour peer Luciana Berger argued the bill should have received pre-legislative scrutiny similar to other private members' bills on conscience issues. She cited the example of the bill that introduced abortion and stopped capital punishment, which had a commission before arriving in the Commons. "They replicated that important pre-legislative scrutiny to ensure the bill engaged with professional bodies responsible for delivering it," she said.
Humanists UK Defend Scrutiny
Andrew Copson, chief executive of Humanists UK, rejected claims that the bill had not been scrutinised enough. He said assisted dying had faced more scrutiny than any private member's bill in history, with laws already operating in over 36 jurisdictions. "This is one of the most examined reforms in parliament, not one of the least," he said.
