The House of Lords “signed its own death warrant” over its stalling of the UK assisted dying bill, the MP Kim Leadbeater said as she joined more than a dozen terminally ill and bereaved people in protest outside parliament.
Marking the second anniversary of the death at Dignitas of the prominent assisted dying campaigner Paola Marra, Leadbeater, whose private member’s bill for England and Wales looks set to run out of time, said many MPs, who had already voted by a majority to pass the bill, were “angry and upset” by the addition of about 1,200 amendments in the Lords, which will probably result in the bill falling without a vote.
The protest, organised by the campaign group Dignity in Dying, came as the number of UK residents who had an assisted death at Dignitas rose to its second-highest level in two decades. Forty-three people travelled to Switzerland in 2025, up from 37 the previous year, and second only to 47 people in 2016, figures show.
Leadbeater said of the teminally ill adults (end of life) bill: “MPs took this decision having entered into this debate in a really serious, considered manner. They really engaged with constituents. I had colleagues in tears in my office talking this through because it is such an emotional issue, and the House of Lords are behaving as though none of that ever happened.”
Welcoming the move to remove hereditary peers from the Lords, she added: “The irony of the Lords signing its own death warrant on this really important issue is not lost on me and isn’t lost on the public, many of whom are extremely angry because there is huge public support for this change in law [on assisted dying].”
The Lords has just three sessions remaining to debate the bill, having discussed only half of the 1,200 amendments. Opponents of the legalisation fear it could increase pressure on some vulnerable people to take their own lives.
But Leadbeater said the bill was “extremely tightly drafted”, that the debate would continue, and that it could be brought back in the next parliamentary session if it ran out of time.
Charlie Falconer, the Labour peer attempting to steer the bill through the Lords, said he was “deeply disappointed” over the way a “minority” of peers had resorted to “procedural shenanigans” to block the bill. “The issues should be debated and then we should vote on them, but that’s not what’s happened. It’s absolutely appalling.”
Protesters were joined by Marra’s brother, Tony, who flew in from Canada, and held placards in memory of their loved ones, before attending Friday’s Lords session, the third to last session before the king’s speech.
They included Catie Fenner, attending in memory of her mother, Alison, who had motor neurone disease and ended her life at Dignitas in Switzerland in 2023. “I understand the need to scrutinise the bill, that is their [the Lords’] role. We absolutely support scrutiny. But we do not support sabotage, and 1,200 amendments is not scrutiny, that’s sabotage. I just feel it’s against democracy and just not the way our parliamentary process should work,” Fenner said.
Linda Deverall, whose partner, Ole Hansen, 67, was forced to travel to Belgium with terminal stomach cancer for an assisted death 14 years ago, said he had explored going to Dignitas but because of his condition he couldn’t guarantee he could swallow the medication unassisted. Like others, she said, being forced to travel meant dying earlier. “He woke up one day and said: ‘If we don’t go now, I won’t be able to go.’” Forcing people to travel alone was “barbaric”, she said.
Jenny Carruthers, 58, who watched her husband “die in agony” from liver cancer, was subsequently diagnosed with terminal breast cancer, which has spread, “so I know exactly where I am going”. Angry at the minority “blocking a law that actually makes the current law safer for people”, she said: “I feel it’s an extension of our treatment rather than a big change in the law. Most people would like to have the option, the comfort, the insurance package.”
She added: “What the Lords are doing will damage democracy.”
