Assisted suicide bill will 'almost certainly fail'

The assisted suicide bill looks set to fail at Westminster, news reports indicate.

According to Sky News, the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill will "almost certainly... fail" because – according to the news outlet – the Government will not be giving the Bill more time in the House of Lords.

Speaking after comments made by Roy Kennedy, the Government's Chief Whip in the Lords, Sky News Deputy Political Editor Sam Coates said: "It's something that [will] in effect kill the Bill."

"[Kennedy] told the Parliamentary Committee, a Labour body of MPs and peers, that the Government will be giving it no more time in the Lords," Coates continued.

Coates explained that the Bill needs to pass before May 2026 - the King's Speech and the end of the current Parliamentary session. And if it doesn't, "it falls and everything needs to start again."

The Bill is currently in the Lords. Because it's a Private Member's Bill, it can only be dealt with on a Friday under existing rules - and there are only six Fridays left. Kennedy is reported to have said that the Bill will not be allocated more sitting days for debate meaning it is "extremely unlikely" to pass before the King's Speech in May, Coates writes.

Coates continued: "The expectation is that this is [the] moment where the Government is, in code, basically going, 'we are not going to help this bill through, and therefore it will fall'."

MPs voted in favour of the legislation. Previous en coverage relating to the Bill can be found in our "assisted suicide" "in depth" section here.

It has been suggested that if the Bill fails in this session, it could be brought back into the Commons in another session and the Parliament Act used to over-rule the Lords. This has only been done seven times since 1911.

However, there would be several challenges to this happening in practice - and a Government source previously suggested instead that "a Royal Commission could be formed to examine some of the practical questions raised by [Bill]," according to the BBC. "The source said using the Parliament Act for a Private Member's Bill would be deeply controversial."