\n<\/p>\n
The House of Lords \u201csigned its own death warrant\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
Marking the second anniversary of the death at Dignitas of the prominent assisted dying campaigner Paola Marra, Leadbeater, whose private member\u2019s 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 \u201cangry and upset\u201d by the addition of about 1,200 amendments in the Lords, which will probably result in the bill falling without a vote.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Leadbeater said of the teminally ill adults (end of life) bill: \u201cMPs 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Welcoming the move to remove hereditary peers from the Lords, she added: \u201cThe irony of the Lords signing its own death warrant on this really important issue is not lost on me and isn\u2019t lost on the public, many of whom are extremely angry because there is huge public support for this change in law [on assisted dying].\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But Leadbeater said the bill was \u201cextremely tightly drafted\u201d, that the debate would continue, and that it could be brought back in the next parliamentary session if it ran out of time.<\/p>\n
Charlie Falconer, the Labour peer attempting to steer the bill through the Lords, said he was \u201cdeeply disappointed\u201d over the way a \u201cminority\u201d of peers had resorted to \u201cprocedural shenanigans\u201d to block the bill. \u201cThe issues should be debated and then we should vote on them, but that\u2019s not what\u2019s happened. It\u2019s absolutely appalling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Protesters were joined by Marra\u2019s brother, Tony, who flew in from Canada, and held placards in memory of their loved ones, before attending Friday\u2019s Lords session, the third to last session before the king\u2019s speech.<\/p>\n
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. \u201cI understand the need to scrutinise the bill, that is their [the Lords\u2019] role. We absolutely support scrutiny. But we do not support sabotage, and 1,200 amendments is not scrutiny, that\u2019s sabotage. I just feel it\u2019s against democracy and just not the way our parliamentary process should work,\u201d Fenner said.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t guarantee he could swallow the medication unassisted. Like others, she said, being forced to travel meant dying earlier. \u201cHe woke up one day and said: \u2018If we don\u2019t go now, I won\u2019t be able to go.\u2019\u201d Forcing people to travel alone was \u201cbarbaric\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n
Jenny Carruthers, 58, who watched her husband \u201cdie in agony\u201d from liver cancer, was subsequently diagnosed with terminal breast cancer, which has spread, \u201cso I know exactly where I am going\u201d. Angry at the minority \u201cblocking a law that actually makes the current law safer for people\u201d, she said: \u201cI feel it\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cWhat the Lords are doing will damage democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The House of Lords \u201csigned its own death warrant\u201d 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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[140,142,376,141,671,12835,3383,7353,5838],"class_list":{"0":"post-47199","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-assisted","9":"tag-bill","10":"tag-death","11":"tag-dying","12":"tag-house","13":"tag-lords","14":"tag-signed","15":"tag-stalling","16":"tag-warrant"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}