Parliament failed to take a decision on assisted dying – we should talk about why
The Palace of Westminster (Alamy)
4 min read
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill prompted heated debate – on the ethical principles around assisted dying, on the practicalities of the policy, and on the sufficiency of safeguards included in the bill.
Those discussions matter deeply. But they are not the only ones that matter. There are also questions that parliament should not avoid simply because the policy contained in this particular bill was controversial: how should the UK Parliament make decisions on complex, morally difficult issues where public expectations are high, political parties do not take a position on ethical issues, and the consequences of legislating, or not, are profound?
The failure of the assisted dying bill to become law was not, in the end, a substantive decision, unlike in Scotland where MSPs recently voted down a Private Members’ Bill (PMB) on assisted dying. The UK Parliament did not conclusively reject assisted dying, nor did it approve it. Instead, the bill ran out of time and fell at the end of the 2024-26 session while its committee stage in the House of Lords was still underway. Whatever your view of the policy itself, that outcome should give pause to anyone interested in the credibility and functioning of Parliament.
PMBs are the only formal route available to backbench MPs wishing to initiate legislation. Historically, they have sometimes been vehicles for major social reform. In recent decades, however, most significant and politically contentious reforms have tended to be introduced by governments themselves. The PMB process has increasingly become confined to technical or narrowly focused changes.
The assisted dying bill changed that. It placed the PMB process firmly in the public spotlight with an issue of major ethical and social significance on which the government itself had not expressed a view.
In procedural terms, the bill appeared unusually well-positioned. It topped the PMB ballot, giving it the most advantageous access to parliamentary time; it secured multiple days of scrutiny in both Houses; and it had supporters and opponents drawn from across party lines. And yet Parliament still failed to reach a conclusion.
This matters. It matters for several reasons, but in part because public confidence in Parliament depends not only on what decisions are reached, but on how decision are made, and whether the public understands the process. As I argued in my book Held in Contempt, opaque parliamentary processes can create public frustration and weaken trust in democratic institutions. Events in recent years – from Brexit to the Covid-19 pandemic – have thrust Parliament into the centre of public debate. This greater visibility has brought greater scrutiny of parliamentary procedure itself.
It is a problem is that many parliamentary processes remain poorly understood even by politically engaged observers. PMBs are a particularly striking example. Between 2010 and 2024, around 2,500 of them were introduced, but only 110 became law. In reality, many never have a meaningful chance of making progress – or even being discussed at all – but to the public it can look at though they are equivalent to other forms of legislation. The fate of PMBs depends far less on the merit of the legislation, and much more on luck (where a backbencher is drawn in the ballot), government support and the availability of parliamentary time.
This is not a new observation. The Commons Procedure Committee has previously concluded that the process creates unrealistic expectations about what legislation is likely to succeed. It has highlighted the structural constraints built into the system – including limited sitting Fridays and government control over scheduling – which make it relatively easy for legislation to stall without Parliament ever reaching a clear decision. Despite the committee and others making recommendations for reform, nothing has been done to change the system.
Public attention to the assisted dying bill should make the manifest problems with the PMB system harder to ignore. Some supporters of the legislation argue the bill should be reintroduced in this sessions’ ballot and forced through using the Parliament Acts. But discussions about whether such a constitutionally unusual approach is appropriate risk obscuring more everyday but nonetheless important questions about parliament’s approach to backbench legislating – whether Parliament’s processes are capable of handling issues of this complexity in a way that is appropriate and credible to the public.
Addressing these questions does not require taking a position on assisted dying itself. There are already many forums in which the merits of the policy are being vigorously discussed. We should not shy away from discussing parliamentary process simply because the issue to which it has been applied is contentious. If anything, controversial issues are precisely when procedural legitimacy matters most.
Ultimately this bill failed because it did not have the support it needed to get through the legislative stages in time, and that answers the question of whether this bill should go onto the statute book. But the assisted dying bill was also, in effect, a stress test for how Parliament handles the hardest moral and ethical questions – and, in that sense, Parliament failed. It failed that test because it did not actually reach an answer.
Hannah White is CEO of the Institute for Government
On 4 June, the Institute for Government will host a discussion examining the Private Members' Bill process. Our aim is not to debate the policy of assisted dying. It is to create space for a different conversation – about how to ensure Parliament can play its role in debating and resolving these most important and difficult questions.
