Supporters of a bill to legalize assisted dying for the terminally ill say they will try again to pass the legislation.
Published on 24 April 2026
A UK bill to legalize assisted dying in England and Wales will fail to become law after efforts by unelected MPs to block it from passing through Parliament.
Time ran out for the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on Friday after more than 1,200 bill amendments tabled by appointed MPs in the House of Lords were stuck in parliamentary gridlock.
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The bill, which proposed to legalize euthanasia for adults with less than six months to live who have clearly expressed their wish to die, was passed by MPs in the House of Commons last June.
To make it a law, both houses of the United Kingdom Parliament will have to approve the law. Bills that are still in progress usually fail when the session ends. Under parliamentary rules on bills proposed by backbenchers, legislation can only be debated on Fridays, thus limiting its chances of passage.
More than 200 MPs signed a letter late Thursday blaming “deliberate delay tactics by some colleagues who oppose its passage” for the bill’s failure.
Lord Charlie Falconer, who sponsored the legislation in the upper house, accused opponents of “pure obstruction”. He said, “It was an absolute travesty of our processes, which a few Lords manipulated by putting in 1,200 amendments… and then talking and talking and talking.”
Campaigners who opposed the law change expressed relief. Gordon MacDonald of the Care Not Killing campaign group said, “It is now clear that this bill was both unsafe and impractical.” He said the Lords had exposed the bill as “skeleton legislation” which was “full of gaps”.
A spokesman for the Christian Medical Fellowship (CMF), which represents medical professionals who oppose assisted death, said, “It is not possible to build an assisted suicide service that is safe, equitable and resistant to putting unacceptable pressure on the most vulnerable people.”
But people in favor of the bill resolved to fight.
“We are extremely angry at what happened, but we are determined to get through this. This is not the end, we will not be stopped,” said campaigner Rebecca Wilcox, whose mother has a terminal illness. He expressed hope that one lawmaker would continue the fight when Parliament reconvenes in mid-May for its next term.
Kim Leadbeater, the MP who introduced the bill in the House of Commons in 2024, said supporting MPs would “go again” in the next parliamentary session, although a different MP would need to introduce a new bill.
“The issue is not going away – there is a very clear direction of travel around the world,” he said, adding that polling in the UK showed support for change.
Lawmakers in the self-governing British dependencies of Jersey and the Isle of Man have already approved euthanasia legislation, but the move still awaits royal assent.
In March MPs in Edinburgh rejected a bill in the Scottish Parliament developed to legalize assisted dying.
