MPs and peers who led the assisted dying bill have promised to bring it back to parliament after it ran out of time in the House of Lords.
Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP who tabled the private member’s bill, said the plan would be to table an identical bill in the next parliamentary session, which would prevent peers blocking it again, as the Lords cannot stop the same bill twice.
The terminally ill adults (end of life) bill, which completed its passage through the Commons in June last year, was blocked in the Lords after more than 1,200 amendments were tabled. The bill’s supporters said it was a denial of democracy. More than 800 of the amendments originated from seven peers.
The bill proposed allowing adults in England and Wales with fewer than six months to live to apply for an assisted death subject to the approval of two doctors and an expert panel. With the current session of parliament ending next week, it has run out of time and has fallen.
Opponents of the bill said it was flawed and campaign groups said so many Lords amendments were necessary to fix glaring weaknesses and contradictions.
But speaking at a press conference shortly after the bill fell, Leadbeater said it had been sunk by disingenuous opponents who would never vote for any version of it. She added: “This isn’t what democracy looks like.”
Asked if the bill would return, Leadbeater said: “Absolutely.” She went on: “There is a clear public appetite for changing the law, and as legislators we have a duty to do something about that.
“I think there is certainly an appetite to bring legislation back, even from certain people who voted against it, because they’ve been so upset by what happened in the House of Lords.
“I’ve got a huge amount of respect for the House of Lords, and I’ve tried to maintain a civilised approach to this debate, but it’s really difficult to see that what’s happened is anything other than undemocratic.”
The Labour MP Kim Leadbeater said: ‘It’s really difficult to see that what’s happened is anything other than undemocratic.’ Photograph: James Manning/PA Media
She rejected the charge from opponents that the bill required more time to be put right, saying: “The idea that this has been rushed through is just utter nonsense, and it’s actually really disrespectful.”
Asked if she hoped the bill might be taken on by the government next time, Leadbeater said she accepted that as an issue of conscience which some cabinet ministers opposed, this could not happen, and it would rely on another MP taking it up after the ballot for preference over private members’ bills.
The event also heard from people directly affected by the continued ban on assisted dying, including Rebecca Wilcox, whose mother, the broadcaster Esther Rantzen, has stage four lung cancer and backs a change to the law.
“I know this is not the end for us; it’s absolutely the end for Mum, and I’m so annoyed that she hasn’t been able to see this go through,” she said, saying the bill had been “thwarted by such a petty few”.
Charles Falconer, the Labour peer who led efforts to pass the bill in the Lords, said the sheer number of amendments tabled in the upper house were part of “an absolute travesty of our processes” manipulated by a small number of peers. He added: “In the end, it was not a problem of a lack of time. The problem was pure obstructionism.”
Tanni Grey-Thompson, the former Paralympian, told fellow peers the legislation ‘had too many gaps’. Photograph: House of Lords/UK Parliament/PA
Tanni Grey-Thompson, a Paralympian peer who had spoken out against the bill, said it had failed because “there are too many gaps in it”, adding she felt there was “a lot of misunderstanding about what people might get” under a law change.
Jane Campbell, a former commissioner at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, told fellow peers that disabled people had contacted her to say this “particular bill frightens them, and they want me to explain to your lordships why it is dangerous”.
