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The Labour MP who introduced the UK assisted dying bill has criticised the “very slow” progress of the legislation through the House of Lords, amid broader concerns that parliament’s upper chamber is acting as a brake on the government’s agenda.
Kim Leadbeater said she was concerned about the progress of her private members’ bill through the Lords, arguing that some of the 1,100 amendments to the legislation were “really quite inappropriate”.
Asked if she was concerned that the bill — which has already passed in the House of Commons — could run out of time in the upper chamber, she told Sky News she had “concerns about that” and that the Lords had “a duty to do this in a timely fashion”.
Leadbeater added: “We do not need over a thousand amendments to put this bill where it needs to be.”
Some Labour ministers are angry with the House of Lords for delaying other recent legislation, including the planning and infrastructure bill.
Labour’s flagship employment rights bill — the biggest overhaul of workers’ rights in a generation — was defeated in the upper chamber on Wednesday night and will return to the Commons on Monday.
But senior members of the House of Lords argue that the chamber is merely fulfilling its purpose, which is to amend and improve legislation.
Dame Esther Rantzen, who has stage-four lung cancer and has campaigned for assisted dying to be allowed in the UK, has urged peers not to “sabotage” the bill.
“I am extremely concerned that the House of Lords is using process in an unprecedented way, sabotaging the bill rather than proposing genuine amendments, and this filibustering risks denying this issue the proper scrutiny it deserves,” she said.
Recent amendments proposed by the Lords include blocking people from leaving the country for 12 months before opting for assisted dying, and stopping people from having their death filmed.
Former Labour ministers Justin Madders and Dame Nia Griffith have written a letter with select committee chair Debbie Abrahams arguing that unelected Lords are over-reaching their role.
The trio, who all voted against the bill in the Commons, urged peers not to block it.
“The fact that it is unelected can only be tolerated in a democracy provided its members accept that it is for the House of Commons to have the last word on what becomes law and what doesn’t in this country,” they said. “If the Lords resort to blocking procedures . . . how long should we as the democratically elected chamber put up with it?”
But seven peers have written a letter defending the Lords’ actions. “Scrutiny should never be conflated with obstruction. Our entire purpose at this stage is to take note of the concerns of experts and professionals and to propose amendments which aim to interrogate the detail,” said the group, which includes Baroness Luciana Berger, Baroness Ilora Finlay and Lord Paul Goodman, who are opponents of assisted dying.
They said it was normal for a bill to have about 1.5 days of scrutiny in the Lords for every day in the Commons. “The bill faced 11 days in committee in the other place . . . yet it has only faced three so far in the Lords with 11 days remaining.”
Health secretary Wes Streeting, who is opposed to the bill, insisted that the House of Lords was not trying to run down the clock on the legislation. He pointed out that the government had provided more sitting Fridays for the upper chamber to ensure the bill did not run out of time before the end of the current parliamentary session.
“I think what we’ve seen throughout the passage of the assisted dying bill, through both the Commons and the Lords, are parliamentarians with sincerely held views on both sides of the debate, engaging in good faith, working together in good nature and scrutinising thoroughly,” he said.
Streeting has previously warned that legalising the right to die could impose major new costs on the NHS.
Lord Strathclyde, former Conservative leader of the Lords, said the chamber was simply fulfilling its role of “trying to improve” bills rather than block them.
“It’s hardly surprising that a new session of a new government will have bills that are badly drafted, with new ideas that require detailed discussion,” he told the FT.
“These bills are passing quickly through the House of Commons with very little debate; it is hardly surprising that the House of Lords wants to take a clear look at them, examine their impact and make suggestions for changes.”