Assisted dying bill on verge of collapse — Esther Rantzen calls peers' tactics 'blatant sabotage'

esther rantzen accused some peers of "blatant sabotage" as the assisted dying bill looks likely to fail because of a shortage of debate time. Backers and opponents have moved to prepare for what happens next as parallels emerge with a separate local contest in Gorton and Denton where disputes over family voting have also surfaced.

Assisted dying bill near collapse

The attempt to introduce laws allowing assisted dying for terminally ill people with less than six months to live now looks likely to fail. The bill passed the House of Commons but has struggled in the House of Lords, where a small number of opponents have laid down so many amendments that it will not be voted on in time to make it through the current parliamentary session, which ends in May. There are less than six days left for debate.

Esther Rantzen on peers' tactics

Supporters have accused peers of deliberate delay. Dame Esther Rantzen said some peers had carried out "blatant sabotage". Speaking on Thursday, she made that charge as campaigners pressed their case. The bill’s backers include Kim Leadbeater, the backbench MP who proposed the law, and Charles Falconer, who has worked with Leadbeater on next steps.

Parliament Act and next steps

The government did not sponsor the bill. No 10 allowed a "free vote" in the Commons so MPs could follow their consciences and it was not whipped. The Labour whip in the House of Lords, Roy Kennedy, told a parliamentary committee that the government would not give the bill any more time because there are only a limited number of sitting Fridays left. The government could have extended the parliamentary session to help the bill through, but that would have been an extraordinary move.

Backers have taken legal and constitutional advice about forcing the bill through in the next session if peers continue to block it. They say they have extensive advice demonstrating they could use the 1911 Parliament Act to force peers to vote on the bill, unamended, in the next session. Some supporters describe the high-stakes move as the "nuclear option" and say it would be the first time the Parliament Act has been invoked for a private member's bill.

The Parliament Act allows the House of Commons to reintroduce a bill and force legislation through if the Lords repeatedly block it. Since its 1949 revision, it has been used for just a handful of bills, including measures to decriminalise homosexuality and to ban foxhunting. After the session ends, a bill must be reintroduced and passed again in the new session to trigger the act's override mechanism, and it must be exactly the same version of the bill as passed by the Commons. There are two routes to invoke the Parliament Act: a supporter adopting it at the next private member's bill ballot, or the government giving the bill time to return to the Commons.

Opponents in the Lords have felt able to frustrate the bill in part because it lacked government sponsorship and was not part of the Labour party manifesto. Supporters argue that peers are subverting the spirit of parliament and that MPs should have primacy; opponents counter that the Commons did not sufficiently scrutinise the legislation and that peers are doing their job by holding it to account.

Gorton and Denton by-election

Voting has finished in the Gorton and Denton by-election. A row has broken out over family voting seen by election observers in polling stations during the contest. Family voting is defined as where two voters either confer, collude or direct each other on voting, which is illegal under the Ballot Secrecy Act 2023.

Deputy political editor Sam Coates was in Gorton and Denton on Tuesday. He was speaking to people, and a number of women said they did not want to speak as their husbands dealt with voting. Manchester City Council responded to reports of high levels of family voting by saying no concerns were reported to it while polls were open.

Counts, ballots and family voting

A spokesperson for the acting returning officer urged that polling station staff are trained to look out for any evidence of undue influence on voters and said: "Polling station staff are trained to look out for any evidence of undue influence on voters. No such issues have been reported today.

"If Democracy Volunteers were so concerned about alleged issues, they could and should have raised them with us during polling hours so that immediate action could be taken. We have operated a central by-election hub which has been rapidly responding to reported issues during the day, in liaison with the police - who had a presence at every polling station - where necessary. It is extremely disappointing that Democracy Volunteers have waited until after polls have closed to make such claims. "

The Democracy Volunteers organisation said it had observed a "record number" of instances of family voting taking place. The first ballot boxes have arrived at the count centre in central Manchester. Council staff will shortly begin counting votes, but it will still be hours before it is known who has won.

On the doorstep, local scenes were mixed. At the Station South Cycle Café in Levenshulme, customers headed for a German film evening described a prevailing view that the Greens were on course for victory. Outside in the rain, Labour and Green Party canvassers were frantically campaigning in the final hours of voting. In Gorton, Green Party posters heavily outnumbered Labour’s, and there were barely any for Reform UK.

Both the national battle over the assisted dying bill and the local tensions in Gorton and Denton are unresolved: the bill faces a deadline as the parliamentary session ends in May with fewer than six days of debate left, and the by-election count in central Manchester will not declare a winner until counts conclude later the same day.