Supporters of assisted dying will seek to force through the bill using an archaic parliamentary procedure if it continues to be blocked by the Lords.
The high stakes move – described by some backers as the “nuclear option” – would be the first time the 1911 Parliament Act has been invoked for a private member’s bill.
The acknowledgment by supporters that they are now preparing to use the act is a sign of growing desperation – they have accepted that without a radical change of approach the bill will fall because of the delays it is experiencing in the House of Lords.
If the bill does not conclude by the end of the parliamentary session in May, it will automatically fail despite having been passed by the Commons.
The bill’s backers, the MP Kim Leadbeater and Lord Charles Falconer, said they have extensive legal and constitutional advice which proves they can force peers to vote on the bill, unamended, in the next session of parliament.
The move is a significant escalation of hostilities between the two sides and is likely to provoke an outcry from opponents of assisted dying, who say the delay in the Lords is not a filibuster but proper scrutiny of a flawed bill.
Falconer said the public and the Commons demanded a proper parliamentary decision was made on the issue. “If opponents think this issue will just go away if it is talked out in the Lords then they are wrong. It will continue to demand parliamentary action until it is resolved,” he told the Guardian.
Falconer said he hoped there would be a change of approach in the Lords to allow it to move to a vote in the upper house.
He said: “That is what should happen and that continues to be my aim. However, because the Lords is a self-regulating chamber there is no mechanism to prevent a small minority of peers frustrating the will of the majority who want to see the bill progress through all its stages.
“Together with Kim Leadbeater MP, who introduced the bill in the Commons, I have sought advice on the possible ways forward and it is clear to me that while we would strongly urge the Lords to come to a conclusion while there is still time, the Parliament Act is an option.”
The Parliament Act allows the House of Commons to reintroduce a bill and force legislation through if the Lords repeatedly block it. Since 1949, when it was revised, it has been used for just a handful of bills to enact laws that have not had the consent of the Lords, including decriminalising homosexuality and banning foxhunting.
After the session of parliament ends, a bill must be reintroduced and passed again in the new session to trigger the act’s override mechanism. It must be exactly the same version of the bill as passed by the Commons.
There are two ways to invoke the Parliament Act: by a supporter adopting it at the next private member’s bill ballot or for the government to give time to the bill for it to return to the Commons.
They would not have to formally adopt the bill and could remain neutral, according to constitutional experts. But for No 10 to give even limited time in the next session to the bill would likely provoke an outcry from opposing MPs – as well as from cabinet ministers such as Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood who are high-profile opponents.
MPs are expected to begin putting pressure on party leaders, including Keir Starmer, to take this approach, warning that if they allow the bill to fall, they would face a large public backlash and risk looking impotent if the bill fell due to the actions of unelected peers.
But invoking the Parliament Act is likely to spark fury among the bill’s opponents who will say it is a tacit admission that Starmer was never neutral because of his previous support for reforming the law.
On Friday, peers will begin their 10th day of debate on the bill with hundreds of amendments still to consider out of more than 1,200 that have been laid. Of the 59 clauses in the bill, peers have not yet concluded debate on clause 1.
According to analysis by the Hansard Society, the bill is likely to need at least 16 more sitting days to even reach the end of committee stage, but has less than half of that time available.
Last week MPs and peers who support the bill angrily accused a handful of Conservative and cross-bench peers of deliberately filibustering with repetitive speeches and pointless amendments.
Its critics say the bill is deeply flawed and unsafe and does not have the support of any of the royal colleges – and say that ministers and its sponsors are not able to answer even some basic questions about it at the dispatch box, contributing to the delay.
A source close to Leadbeater said they were confident the Parliament Act would apply if the bill was taken through a second time and there are precedents for the government to give time to the bill for conscience issues.
Though Starmer himself is a longtime supporter of changes to the assisted dying law, there has been scepticism about the bill among strategists in Downing Street, some of whom see it as an unnecessary distraction and a risky electoral issue.
Starmer has shown himself unwilling to personally intervene or adopt the bill, stressing the government’s neutrality thus far, though he has voted twice in favour of its passing.
