After more than 220 hours of debate, the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill failed to pass on 24th April. However, the Bill didn’t fail through a vote in the House of Lords, but by being run out of time. Since the Bill’s first reading on 23rd June 2025, 43 UK citizens travelled to Dignitas, an assisted dying centre in Switzerland.

Was this blocking caution or democratic failure? Kim Leadbeater, Labour MP, introduced the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill to the House of Commons in October 2024 and it passed its third reading with a majority of 23 in June 2025. The Bill then faced 1,280 amendments in the House of Lords, a parliamentary record with just seven peers responsible for nearly 700 of the amendments.

The Bill proposed to allow terminally ill adults, subject to safeguards and protections, to request assistance to end their own life. The Bill applied only to people aged 18 or over with the capacity to make the decision to end their life, having been a resident of the UK for at least 12 months prior to making the declaration. The Bill sets out a notably rigorous process for making this declaration.

The person must pass through seven stages: a preliminary discussion; first declaration; assessment by a doctor; independent second assessment from a doctor with no prior involvement in patient’s care; review by a panel consisting of a senior judge, psychiatrist and social worker; followed by a mandatory reflection period of at least 14 days; and a final second declaration. Coercion is taken very seriously, as anyone who makes a declaration through coercion could face up to 14 years in prison and anyone who coerces another to make the declaration could face life imprisonment. Some peers opposed on principle, among them the Archbishop of Canterbury, who argued that life should never be taken.

Disputes arose with the condition that a person’s death must reasonably be expected within six months as peers argued that this prognosis could be uncertain. The result of this Bill has been met with justifiable anger and frustration. The Chief Executive of Humanists UK, Andrew Copson commented: ‘It’s a stain on our democracy and a slap in the face to hundreds of terminally ill people’.

Paul Foster, Labour MP for South Ribble told The Observer: ‘This is the Lords at its worst [...] they’re trying to prevent government functioning’. Despite opposition, approximately 200 Lords wrote to MPs to express their regret that significant procedural delays ran this Bill out of time. It is not merely that this constricts the autonomy of terminally ill patients to choose the nature and place of their death, but the method of defeat.

Exhausting the 14 Friday sessions of debate is a clear act of filibustering rather than conventional scrutiny

With peers covering only 7 of the Bill’s 59 clauses whilst exhausting the 14 Friday sessions of debate is a clear act of filibustering rather than conventional scrutiny. This raises the question of whether a determined minority of peers can override democracy through procedure. Regardless of this frustrating setback, Sarah Wootton, Chief Executive of Dignity in Dying, optimistically responded, ‘nobody should mistake delay for defeat’.

The Assisted Dying Bill may well return, but its manner of defeat exposes troubling weaknesses in the operation of the House of Lords.