Assisted Suicide Bill set to fall: what might happen next?

Next week the Westminster Parliament will be prorogued before the King’s Speech on 13 May. This means that the current parliamentary session, which started after the 2024 General Election, has officially ended.

One of the results of prorogation is that any Private Members Bills that have not finished all their parliamentary stages officially fall. As today is the last scheduled day of debate of Kim Leadbeater’s Assisted Suicide Bill, and it has not completed all its parliamentary stages, will fail to become law.

This is a moment to give thanks to God for His mercy. When Ms. Leadbeater introduced her Bill in the House of Commons in October 2024, we knew it was going to be a major struggle to see it defeated. There were more than 300 new MPs, and we didn’t know where most of them stood on the issue!

When the legislation passed Second Reading with a majority of 55, it was a dark day. Despite the clear dangers with the Bill, the majority felt almost too large to overcome.

But alongside our allies, we worked with MPs to illustrate the devastating impacts this Bill would usher in. When the Bill came back for Third Reading in June 2025, the majority fell to just 23. And during that debate, some MPs specifically said they were only supporting it because they wanted the House of Lords to address its flaws and to give it more scrutiny.

During its time in the Lords, Peers from across the House have stood up repeatedly and pointed out the manifest dangers and flaws in the drafting of the proposed legislation.

But the idea that a small group of religiously-motivated Peers were conspiring to block the Bill is simply untrue. 244 Peers have either spoken or tabled more than 1,000 amendments, including 76 from the Bill’s own sponsor in the Lords, Lord Falconer! The average length of speeches made has been less than 7 minutes. The House of Lords has been conducting scrutiny, not sabotage.

It should be recognised that pro-assisted suicide supporters are already planning their next move. It remains to be seen precisely what tactics they deploy.

Parliament Acts

One route forward might be to attempt to use a rarely-used parliamentary device called the Parliament Acts. These two pieces of legislation effectively prevent the House of Lords from stopping a Bill becoming law. It has only been used 7 times before, and never for a Private Members Bill. The last time it was used was in 2004 to ram the fox-hunting ban through.

It is currently unclear - even to parliamentary experts - precisely how this will unfold in detail. On a basic level, however, the following would need to happen for this to work:

1. An MP who supports assisted suicide would need to come high up in the Private Members' Bill ballot - simply to stand a good chance of their Bill getting enough parliamentary time.
2. That MP would then need to introduce an identical Bill to the one which the House of Commons sent to the House of Lords last June.
3. It would then need to pass through the House of Commons completely unamended. This is the most difficult challenge for Bill supporters to achieve.
4. The Lords may then begin their work on the Bill once again, and may receive suggested amendments from the Commons (even though the Commons could not amend it themselves).
5. The crux of the issue is that, unlike this time, it does not matter whether or not the Lords complete their scrutiny - the Bill will become law regardless. 
6. If the Lords are seen to ‘reject’ the Bill again, this is where the Parliament Acts kick in, and the Speaker of the House of Commons ensures that the Bill becomes law.

This is a very controversial approach, especially when you consider new polling from Care Not Killing which shows that support for the Kim Leadbeater Assisted Suicide Bill has fallen dramatically and it is no longer certain any such Bill would command a majority in the House of Commons.

Speaking to the BBC earlier today, Kim Leadbeater said she was ‘aware’ of the powers in the Parliament Acts, but she hoped a new Bill would go through the ‘normal legislative process’.

Private Members’ Bill

Another approach would be to try and secure a high spot in the Private Members’ bill ballot and then introduce a brand-new Private Members Bill.

If they do this without the Parliament Acts, then the proposed legislation would effectively start from scratch, and would need to pass all stages in both the House of Commons stages and the House of Lords. Only if it receives a majority vote by both Houses at key points would it then go to the King for Royal Assent.

The main thing to do at this stage is to pray! We have already seen how God can overturn situations which looked hopeless, and He can make impossible things possible!

• Give thanks that the Leadbeater Bill has fallen
• Pray that no pro-assisted suicide MP comes in the top 10 of the upcoming private members bill ballot
• Pray for Peers who have faithfully resisted the Assisted Suicide Bill that they will be refreshed ahead of a new Parliament
• Pray for CARE and our allies as we work to stop assisted suicide and ensure palliative care becomes more widely available

Assisted suicide is an immensely complex and challenging issue to work on. There are many people, on both sides, who have deeply sad and compelling stories to back up the side they take.

At CARE, we encourage all Christians to recognise that our times are in God’s hands (1 Samuel 2:6). We want to show genuine compassion for those who are suffering and sick and this means walking alongside them, just as our Good Shepherd does for us (Psalm 23:4).

We think assisted suicide is the wrong answer to the right question, which is how can we help people die well? The answer is to ensure sufficient health, social and palliative care is available to all, at the point of need. Sadly, palliative care provision across the UK is patchy, at best. A major report published in March by the Health and Social Care Committee found numerous inadequacies in the current provision. It would be a good thing for valuable parliamentary time to be spent addressing this precise issue, rather than using arcane parliamentary devices to force through an irredeemably flawed assisted suicide bill.

Let’s commit to making that case in the new Parliament, because it really is our better story.