Anti-assisted dying peers have been open about filibustering the Bill

Peers have been accused of attempting to filibuster the Assisted Dying Bill, essentially causing it to fail by proposing an unreasonable number of amendments and deliberately making unnecessary speeches to time it out. Opponents of assisted dying have responded by claiming the amendments are just for scrutiny and improving the Bill. However, some peers have been overt about their willingness to filibuster the Assisted Dying Bill.

There are several cases of Peers being explicitly clear that they are trying to block the Bill by means other than it being voted down at Third Reading – which may mean it fails even if a majority support it:

• After the Commons vote, the Times reported anonymously that opponents pledged to use ‘every means possible’ to prevent it becoming law. One peer told The Times there were ‘plenty of black arts that could be used to kill the bill off’, including tabling many amendments, and that they ‘could not imagine how it could get through’.
• Similarly, after the Commons vote, GB News reported: ‘A number of leading members of the House of Lords have already vowed to try to scupper the legislation’. Immediately quoted is Lord Frost saying ‘Many of us will now oppose this Bill in the Lords, and entirely legitimately… The fight goes on.’
• Baroness Campbell told the Disability News Service that her role will be to ‘amend, amend, amend, amend, amend, so it becomes so tight that anyone would find it difficult to get it’.

Lord Moylan posted on X ‘Peers are justified in blocking assisted dying bill’ and shared a Times editorial saying peers that ‘Peers who want to continue blocking this bill and prevent it from ever becoming law are justified in doing so’ – something clearly a reference to the use of amendments and speeches to block the bill. Lord Moylan is vocal against assisted dying on X, and shared a post saying ‘The final duty the Hereditaries can do for their country is to kill this appalling Assisted Dying Bill’.

Richy Thompson, Director of Public Affairs and Policy at Humanists UK, said:

‘The sheer scale and nature of the amendments being tabled make it increasingly difficult to accept claims that this is simply about careful scrutiny. What we are seeing instead is a coordinated attempt by a small number of opponents to delay, obstruct, and ultimately prevent Parliament from properly considering the Assisted Dying Bill. The House of Lords has a vital role in improving legislation, but using procedural tactics to run down the clock risks undermining both democratic accountability and public trust.’

Richard Osborne, Board Member of My Death, My Decision, said:

‘The mask is well and truly slipping. It is no longer credible for some peers to claim they are merely scrutinising the Assisted Dying Bill when there are repeated, overt statements, and even anonymous briefings, openly admitting an intention to block, filibuster or wreck it. Scrutiny improves legislation; deliberately trying to run down the clock is something else entirely, and the public can see the difference.’

Other peers trying to block the Bill:

Other peers have also vowed to stop the legislation, whether by voting it down or by filibustering it. The House of Lords is an unelected chamber, unrepresentative of the population and even unrepresentative of the last election. There are no accountability measures for the public, and the House of Lords contains 26 Church of England archbishops and bishops known as the ‘Lords Spiritual’ who have an automatic right to sit and vote.

• Lord Alton wrote in Conservative Women ‘My fellow peers and I will do our damnedest to halt these evil abortion and assisted dying Bills’, and on Politics.co.uk ‘the Lords is within its rights to do what is necessary to make the bill safer for vulnerable people and, if necessary, to reject it entirely’.
• Baroness Monckton wrote in the MailOnline: ‘Why I’ll fight in the Lords against this breathtakingly cruel and ignorant assisted suicide Bill’.
• The Bishop of London (now Archbishop of Canterbury-designate) and the Archbishop of York said during the Second Reading debate that they will force a vote on assisted dying. The Bishop of London told the Standard, ‘I will vote against the Assisted Dying Bill’. The Catholic Archbishop of Westminster told the Times ‘The task is now clear: every effort must be made to limit the damage that will be done by this decision.’

An overwhelming number of amendments:

Over 1,150 amendments have been proposed to the Bill. For a 51-page Bill, this is an outrageous number of amendments. There are an average of 22.6 amendments per page so far. The Bill with the next highest number of amendments this session, the Children’s Wellbeing Schools Bill, had only 5.3 per page.

• Baroness Finlay (190 amendments), Baroness Grey-Thompson (130 amendments) and Lord Moylan (46 amendments) were featured together in an article by The Telegraph titled ‘The peers accused of thwarting the euthanasia bill’. The same article claims that Lord Farmer, who describes the Bill as ‘an atheist bill that assumes there is nothing after death’, is working with Grey-Thompson and Finlay.
• Baroness Grey-Thompson shared on X ‘I have tabled many amendments. Some were ruled out of scope. There are probably another 50 that I haven’t tabled.’ Despite already tabling 130 amendments herself. One of her amendments was for a mandatory pregnancy test for all applicants, including men.

Baroness Berger (19 amendments) was featured in an article by the Jewish Chronicle titled ‘Baroness Berger tells the government it’s not too late to stop Assisted Dying Bill’

When mass amendment sits alongside explicit pledges by peers to stop the Bill entirely, the distinction between scrutiny and obstruction becomes blurred. Peers who claim a nuanced, good-faith approach should therefore explicitly disavow attempts to wreck the Bill through procedural overload. Amendments have included a holiday ban for all applicants and an unworkable requirement for half a dozen GP visits.

Seven of the most vocal opponents to the Bill have put forward over 600 amendments between them. It would take two decades to debate all the current amendments.

The Bill must pass all parliamentary stages before Spring 2026, or it fails.