![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2220308777-1024x683.jpg\")
Supporters of assisted dying react outside Parliament on June 20, 2025 as MPs in the House of Commons voted in favour of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. | Wiktor Szymanowicz\/Future Publishing via Getty Images<\/p>\nDa Costa called the plan \u201cextraordinary.\u201d She said: \u201cLast time round, MPs voted to allow the Lords to do their work. This is a very different vote. There will be no \u2018off switch\u2019 once it goes to the Lords. MPs will be asked if they\u2019re happy with the bill \u2014 with all its deficiencies and all the evidence that has been heard \u2014 to become law.\u201d<\/p>\n
Opponents of the bill argue that the debates in the Lords have exposed holes in the law that the Commons scrutiny did not. One, Labour peer Luciana Berger, pointed out that the bill has sweeping powers and 59 clauses \u2014 far longer than any known private members\u2019 bill, including those that allowed abortion and outlawed capital punishment.<\/p>\n
Supporters of assisted dying react outside Parliament on June 20, 2025 as MPs in the House of Commons voted in favour of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. | Wiktor Szymanowicz\/Future Publishing via Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cThis process has shown that we can\u2019t get a bill that is safe,\u201d said Berger. \u201cWhat are [proponents] saying about the medical colleges in this country \u2014 the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Medical Examiners, the Royal College of GPs, who all as organizations say they are publicly neutral on the principle of assisted dying, but on this piece of legislation, have very substantive and significant concerns about this bill?\u201d Falconer argued that these concerns had been dealt with during debates in the Lords.<\/p>\n
Da Costa added: \u201cSupporters promised to do the work in the Lords last time, they didn\u2019t. Instead, Lord Falconer was looking at Parliament Acts before second reading \u2014 requesting government advice. They\u2019ve wanted to do this from the start. It\u2019s smoke and mirrors. They\u2019ve always known that the Lords would never have enough time.\u201d (Falconer described this claim as \u201ccompletely false\u201d and \u201crubbish,\u201d saying he only considered the Parliament Acts once the bill was almost certainly doomed, and that while he had accepted some changes to the bill, he hadn\u2019t made promises to change it at the outset.)<\/p>\n
Leadbeater insisted she is \u201cextremely open to the idea of making changes \u2026 but often people can\u2019t tell you what they want those changes to be.\u201d But Berger countered that \u201cninety-nine percent of the time, Charlie [Falconer] has rejected every single amendment.\u201d<\/p>\n
A prime example of this dispute is an amendment by the former Paralympian Tanni Grey-Thompson, which would require people seeking an assisted death to have a pregnancy test. \u201cThis includes 72-year-old men,\u201d said Falconer. \u201cIt\u2019s absolutely ridiculous. These are such obvious filibustering techniques.\u201d Berger acknowledged it could have been drafted better, but argued the amendment showed there had been scant consideration of what to do if pregnant women wanted to end their lives. \u201cIt\u2019s a really good case in point about how this whole process has been completely inadequate,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Da Costa called the plan \u201cextraordinary.\u201d She said: \u201cLast time round, MPs voted to allow the Lords to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[7331,7332,5172,7333,3189,157,13,7334,1506,3191,173,2169,401,94,1049,7335,7336,42,185,3807,1369,434,91,5,38,462,4108],"class_list":["post-15489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","tag-abortion","tag-alan-campbell","tag-angela-rayner","tag-assisted-dying","tag-books","tag-brexit","tag-britain","tag-communications","tag-cost-of-living","tag-david-cameron","tag-england","tag-fuels","tag-history","tag-keir-starmer","tag-king-charles-iii","tag-lindsay-hoyle","tag-meg-hillier","tag-middle-east","tag-parliament","tag-poll","tag-rights","tag-shabana-mahmood","tag-tony-blair","tag-uk","tag-wales","tag-war","tag-wes-streeting"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116417802248521047","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}