Lords to be seen as ‘irrelevant’ if no progress on assisted dying law – Falconer

The House of Lords is in danger of being seen as an “irrelevant talking shop” if it does not make progress on the assisted dying Bill, a Labour former minister has said.

As deliberations began on Friday, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, who is sponsoring the Bill in the upper chamber, hit out at peers for moving at what he described as a “glacial pace”.

He said peers have spent more than 80 hours scrutinising the contentious legislation, since it was passed by the Commons in June last year.

Opponents of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill have been continuously accused of trying to “talk out” the Bill as it makes its way through the Lords.

However, many in the upper chamber insist they are simply doing their job of scrutinising a Bill, which they argue is not safe in its current form and needs to be strengthened.

With the clock ticking, the draft legislation will fall if it does not complete all its parliamentary stages before the end of the current session in May.

Lord Falconer told the Press Association this would not be “the end of the road” for the Bill, vowing to invoke a rare parliamentary procedure to override peers.

The Parliament Act allows for Bills backed by the Commons in two successive sessions, but rejected by peers, to pass into law without Lords approval.

Only seven Bills have passed using the powers under section 2 of the law, including the Hunting Act 2004.

On the 10th day of committee stage in the Lords, Lord Falconer accused peers of “taking an undue length of time” on the Bill.

He told the chamber: “We have spent 53 hours debating this Bill at committee stage, if we include the additional scrutiny by a select committee and the two full days of debate at second reading, we have had more than 80 hours of deliberations on this Bill since it was passed to us in June, more than eight months ago.

“1,253 amendments have been tabled, in total, of which we have debated 354 so far.

“We’ve have over 850 amendments left to be debated, which suggests we need another 22 days of committee stage if we continue at this glacial pace.

“After nine days of debate, we have completed consideration of just three clauses.

“We have debated 26 groups, and have another 60 still to go.”

He added: “I would earnestly ask the House to consider whether or not we could agree informally, how we could make progress and complete the committee stage by the end of the next day.

“Because otherwise we fail to do what we are so good at, which is scrutiny and improvement.

“The way it is going at the moment, we will reach no conclusions whatsoever.

“We will appear to be an irrelevant talking shop.”

If passed, the Bill would allow adults with terminal illnesses in England and Wales who have less than six months to live to apply for an assisted death.

It was voted through by MPs by a majority of 24.