Government refuses to say if it is secretly working on how to implement assisted suicide bill

The government has refused to say if it is secretly working on how to implement assisted suicide legislation that has yet to be approved by parliament, despite repeatedly claiming it has taken a “neutral” stance on the bill.

The concerns emerged during the first day of the bill’s committee stage in the House of Lords last Friday.

Despite there now being nearly 1,000 proposed amendments to the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill, peers managed to debate only two of the amendments on 14 November, the first of just four planned Fridays put aside for its committee stage.

The Lords debated issues around the application of the bill to Wales, and whether “capacity” should be replaced with “ability” in the bill’s first clause.

The bill, which applies to England and Wales, has been sponsored as a private members’ bill by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater and Labour peer Lord Falconer.

The government – including the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) – claims it remains “neutral on the principle of assisted dying” and on the passage of the bill, and that whether the law should change “is absolutely and rightly a matter for parliament”.

But the disabled crossbench peer Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson told fellow peers last Friday that a civil servant had introduced himself at the Lady Mayor’s Show on 8 November and told her he was “working full-time on the implementation of this bill”.

Speaking during the debate on how the legislation would apply in Wales, she added: “I am not sure he meant to tell me that.”

Baroness [Therese] Coffey, another opponent of legalisation and deputy prime minister during Liz Truss’s brief stint as prime minister in 2022, and a former work and pensions secretary, said she found this information “very interesting”.

The Conservative peer said: “I am very interested in that, because the response that I have had from the minister is that nobody should be working on this beyond the bill team, so nobody should be working on implementation.”

Baroness Grey-Thompson replied: “Is there far more going on behind the scenes?

“Is the presumption that very few amendments will be accepted, as happened [when the bill was debated and passed by MPs], or are the supporters of this bill really open to making it better?”

Baroness Merron, a junior DHSC minister, did not answer these concerns when responding to the debate on Baroness Coffey’s amendment on Wales.

A DHSC spokesperson repeatedly refused to say this week whether civil servants were working on the implementation of the bill, when asked by Disability News Service.

Instead, the department said that the primary function of the team working within DHSC on the bill was to work on its legal and technical coherence, which included technical drafting support and advising on the workability of the legislation, while also supporting ministers to fulfil their parliamentary duties.

The spokesperson said: “The terminally ill adults (end of life) bill is a private members’ bill, with Kim Leadbeater MP and Lord Falconer of Thoroton as the sponsors.

“The government is neutral on the policy of assisted dying and whether this bill should become law.”

Meanwhile, several peers expressed concern last Friday at how the Lords would have time to debate the hundreds of amendments in the time allocated to the bill.

Lord Tyrie, a non-affiliated peer who said he was “a supporter of the intentions of the bill”, said: “What concerns me is that we are now going to try to improve a bill, which is demonstrably flawed, with 900 amendments – many of which seem to make sense to me – on the floor of the house between now and Christmas.”

He said he believed the government should now take control of the bill.

Crossbencher Baroness Stuart added: “The way the bill is written has so many flaws that I do not think that, however long we debate it, this house will be able to get it to a stage where it is legislatively fit to be passed, and that is our role: we should not vote for anything that cannot legislatively be properly implemented.”

Lord Kennedy, Labour’s chief whip in the Lords, said the government “remain neutral and will not be providing government time for this bill” and did not “have any government time to give it at the moment”.

He added: “I know how long it has taken on the bill. I know that views are sincerely held on both sides. I will work in the usual channels to deal with these matters.”

Among the amendments due to be debated tomorrow (21 November) are proposed improvements to the bill around coercion and financial abuse.

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