Members of the House of Lords have proposed “totally unnecessary” and “very cruel” amendments to the assisted dying bill in an attempt to scupper it, the MP leading the campaign has said.
Kim Leadbeater said on Friday she believed that peers opposed to the bill were trying to block it by proposing hundreds of changes, including one that would require terminally ill people to be filmed as they undergo an assisted death.
The Lords will vote on some of those on Friday during a fourth day of debate on the bill, with six more sessions scheduled for the new year. Supporters now fear there will not be enough time to debate more than 1,000 amendments before the parliamentary session ends, putting the bill at risk of collapsing.
Leadbeater told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “What we’re seeing with this bill, sadly, is well over 1,000 amendments have been tabled, many of which are totally unnecessary and some of which are actually just very cruel when we think about the cohort of people that the bill is designed to help.”
She highlighted three amendments she said were particularly cruel. These included one that would deny an assisted death to anyone who had travelled outside the country in the previous year, another that would screen family members for financial impropriety, and a third that would require assisted deaths to be recorded. She described the final proposal as “incredibly intrusive and heartless”.
Leadbeater added: “What’s happening, sadly, is looking increasingly like people who are fundamentally opposed to a change in the law – a view which I respect – trying to prevent the law passing. And that would be wrong from a democratic perspective, when the Commons has voted for it and there is huge public support.”
The bill passed the Commons in June but has since got caught up in the Lords. After three days of committee-stage debate, peers have covered only 80 of more than 1,150 tabled amendments, prompting concerns it will run out of time.
Three MPs who previously opposed the substance of the bill wrote a letter to the Guardian on Thursday, urging peers not to deliberately filibuster it.
Justin Madders, Nia Griffith and Debbie Abrahams said: “If the Lords resort to blocking procedures and impede the implementation of decisions taken in the Commons … how long should we, as the democratically elected chamber, put up with it?”
Opponents of the bill argue that lengthy scrutiny of amendments is normal for such a complex issue, and that it has fallen to peers to address a range of concerns about the legislation, including from professional bodies such as the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Tanni Grey-Thompson, one of the peers who has proposed amendments, said they were being made to improve the bill and, in particular, to prevent terminally ill people from being coerced into an assisted death.
“These are about exploring coercion,” she told the BBC. “At this stage, we don’t vote; we’re actually there to unpack the bill. So the same with the recording of someone’s death – that is about being able to spot coercion. It’s about being able to learn, it’s been about to improve what happens when somebody dies.”
One of the items to be debated on Friday is an amendment from Alex Carlile, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation., which would restore the role of a high court judge in deciding applications for an assisted death.
The amendment, which has growing support among peers, would allow designated judges to decide on cases. Supporters say it would address concerns that Britain’s overstretched courts would struggle to handle any additional workload arising from assisted dying applications.
