Peers back calls for extra time to debate assisted dying bill

Peers have backed calls for extra time for the House of Lords to debate the assisted dying bill.

The proposal was put forward by supporters, who are increasingly concerned it could run out of time to pass all its parliamentary stages, but opponents argued the Bill is unsafe and will not be fixed by more time.

The debate continued on Friday, the fifth of 10 extra scheduled sessions, but plans to debate 15 groups of amendments came up well short, with peers only getting on to the second group of amendments by the end of the session.

The bill has been approved by MPs but must also pass the Lords before early May, when the current session of Parliament is expected to end, to become law.

There will now be private negotiations between peers over when and how much extra time should be granted.

Extending debates already scheduled on Fridays is one likely option but sitting later would anger some Jewish peers because the weekly religious Shabbat ceremony begins at sunset.

Peers have already been given 10 extra sessions to debate the legislation but with more than 1,000 amendments proposed there is a risk it will not pass all its parliamentary stages in time.

Friday marked the halfway point through the 10 originally-allocated extra sessions and the House of Lords has now debated 17 groups and nearly 200 amendments, leaving more than 800 amendments to go.

Peers continued to debate groups of amendments, in larger batches than previous sessions, with supporters of the bill hoping to get through 15 groups by the end of the session.

However, despite getting though 79 amendments in group one, the session was adjourned at the usual time of 15:00 GMT, part-way through the second group of 30 amendments.

Supporters of assisted dying have raised concerns that the number of amendments put forward - which experts believe is a record for a bill proposed by a backbench MP - is a delaying tactic aimed at blocking the bill from becoming law.

Opponents insist they are not obstructing the bill but believe significant changes are needed to make it safe and to protect vulnerable people.

The legislation proposes allowing terminally ill adults in England and Wales with fewer than six months to live to apply for an assisted death, subject to certain safeguards.

Lord Falconer, who is leading the bill's passage through the upper chamber, put forward the proposal for extra time to allow peers to consider the legislation.

Speaking during a debate on the motion, which passed without a vote, he warned that if peers failed to reach a conclusion "it would significantly damage the reputation" of the House of Lords.

Former Lord Justice of Appeal Baroness Butler-Sloss also warned the reputation of the House was "at stake"

Supporting the proposals for more time, she told peers: "I don't like the Bill, but we have it, and we have to deal with it."

However, Conservative peer Lord Shinkwin, who has rare brittle bone disease osteogenesis imperfecta, argued that peers had already "been generous with our time".

"We can only ever work with what we have been given, the volume of amendments, and the time taken to consider them, therefore, reflect the quality or lack thereof of the bill that was sent to us," he said.

"If any bill is so poorly drafted and so unsafe, surely the question is not so much whether the bill deserves more time as whether yet more time could transform it."

A source close to peers concerned about the bill said: "Supporters of assisted dying seem determined to keep complaining about the process in the Lords rather than engaging with significant failings in the bill."

They added that the motion was not accompanied by "any acknowledgement of the scale of the problems identified by Lords committees and external experts or of what amendments Lord Falconer is willing to accept to address those problems".

The government's chief whip in the Lords, Lord Kennedy, said he would look to hold "urgent discussions" early next week "to seek to find a way forward to deliver on what the House has just agreed".

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