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Members of the House of Lords have proposed “totally unnecessary” and “very cruel” amendments to the assisted dying bill in a bid to scupper it, the MP leading the campaign has said.
Kim Leadbeater said on Friday she believed that peers opposed to the bill were trying to block it by putting forward hundreds of changes, including one to film terminally ill people as they undergo an assisted death.
The Lords will vote on some of those on Friday during a fourth day of debate on the bill, with six more scheduled for the new year. Its supporters now worry there will not be enough time to debate more than 1,000 amendments before the end of the parliamentary session, putting the bill at risk of failing entirely.
Leadbeater told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “What we’re seeing with this bill, sadly, is well over 1,000 amendments have been tabled, many of which are totally unnecessary and some of which are actually just very cruel when we think about the cohort of people that the bill is designed to help.”
She highlighted three amendments she argued were particularly cruel.
They included one change which would deny an assisted death to anyone who has travelled outside the country in the previous year, another which would check family members for financial impropriety, and one which would demand that assisted deaths are recorded. She called the final one of these “incredibly intrusive and heartless”.
Leadbeater added: “What’s happening, sadly, is looking increasingly like people who are fundamentally opposed to a change in the law – a view which I respect – trying to prevent the law passing.
“And that would be wrong from a democratic perspective, when the Commons has voted for it and there is huge public support.”
The bill passed the Commons in June, but has since got caught up in the Lords. During three days of debate at committee stage, peers have managed to cover only 80 out of more that 1,150 tabled amendments, leading to concerns it will run out of time.
Three MPs who previously opposed the substance of the bill wrote a letter to the Guardian on Thursday urging peers not to deliberately filibuster it.
The three MPs – Justin Madders, Nia Griffith and Debbie Abrahams – said: “If the Lords resort to blocking procedures, and impede the implementation of decisions taken in the Commons … how long should we as the democratically elected chamber put up with it?”
Opponents of the bill say, however, that the lengthy consideration of amendments is normal for a complex issue and that it has been left to peers to address a series of concerns about the bill, including from professional bodies such as the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Tanni Grey-Thompson, one of the peers who has proposed amendments, said they were being made to improve the bill and particularly to prevent terminally ill people from being coerced into having an assisted death.
“These are about exploring coercion,” she told the BBC.
“At this stage, we don’t vote, we’re actually there to unpack the bill. So the same with the recording of someone’s death – that is about being able to spot coercion. It’s about being able to learn, it’s been about to improve what happens when somebody dies.”
One of the items to be debated on Friday is an amendment from Alex Carlile, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. His proposal would restore the role of a high court judge in deciding applications for an assisted death.
The amendment, which has growing support among peers, would allow some judges to decide on cases. Supporters of Lord Carlile’s amendment say it would deal with concerns that Britain’s overstretched courts would not be able to handle any additional cases that arise through assisted dying.
