From the release of automated bots through social media providers by bad actors such as Russia’s Internet Research Agency in order to corrupt democratic processes through misinformation; the emergence of vulgar yet alluring movements and personages like MAGA and Donald Trump who carry the Triple P virus of Populism, Polarisation and Post-Truth, and the imponderable capacity of Artificial Intelligence to transform all our lives.
Yet what has played out in the Mother of Parliaments in the last week has illustrated the damage to the democratic will of the people that can be wrought by a venerable old part of constitutional architecture. I am referring to the steady strangulation of the Assisted Dying Bill passed by the elected UK House of Commons by the unelected, hereditary, and nominated House of Lords. The near death (absolutely no pun attended) by a thousand amendments of a piece of legislation commanding cross-party support and which, when enacted, will grant those who wish to avail of it the ultimate human rights to bodily autonomy and dignity in control of the circumstances of one’s own death, is a democratic affront no matter what one’s personal views on assisted dying are. For, in an example of Parliament at its best, the debate around the Bill was conducted with dignity and full accommodation of the passionate views held on either side of the issue and no imposition of party whips. It was then passed by the body delegated by the British people to deliberate and decide on their behalf. However, in what is probably the most outrageous abuse of its functions since it vetoed the 1911 Finance Bill, the Other Place has sought to filibuster the Assisted Dying Bill out of existence.
To briefly reprise the history of the assisted dying bill, properly known as The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, would allow mentally competent adults who are expected to die within six months - and who express “a clear, settled and informed wish to end their own life” - to get help to do so. Two doctors would have to agree as to their eligibility and a High Court judge would have to be satisfied as to the absence of any coercion. It was passed by a free and historic vote in the House of Commons in June 2025. It is opposed by Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary and Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary.
The violation of the fundamental tenets democratic decision making whereby an unelected upper chamber can try to override a decision by the elected lower chamber on any issue is thus a fundamental affront to anyone of a democratic persuasion. But it is the potential real-life impacts on the lived experience of those who desire a peaceful death to end a life of intolerable life. In the words of the tetraplegic Melanie Reid, the ideologues in the Lords who claim to be acting on behalf of a vulnerability minority (while defying the will of the majority).
Since then, a small group of peers have delivered more than a thousand amendments and delivered lengthy speeches, leading to accusations of the grand old delaying tactic of filibustering which Irish Home Rule Party MPs used to such infuriating effect (to opponents of Home Rule) in the Commons in the 19th century and by both Democrats and Republicans in state legislatures up and down the USA.
On Friday, the Bill’s eighth committee stage debate was upheld in the Lords; a further six are scheduled, keeping it in the upper chamber until late April. However it must clear all its remaining stages in parliament before the end of the current session, probably in May, or it will automatically fail.[1]
Analysis by the Observer shows that six peers are responsible for half the amendments: Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson; the former Health Secretary (and bon viveur drinker and cigar smoker) Therese Coffey; Ilora Finlay, a professor of palliative and former president of the Royal Society of Medicine; Alex Carlile KC, the former independent reviewer of antiterrorist legislation, Guy Mansfield (Lord Sandhurst) and Paul or Lord Goodman of Wycombe, who have tabled 623 amendments between them. During the first seven debates, opponents have taken up 90% of the debating time, according to Humanists UK, prominent Bill supporters.[2]
The sincerity of prominent disability campaigner and former Paralympic medallist Tanni Grey-Thompson and her concerns around disability matters as it relates to assisted dying cannot be dismissed. Nor can the expertise in palliative care of Professor Finlay be ignored. However most of the amendments amount to arguments against Common decisions at the heart of the Bill rather than technical revisions which raise fundamental constitutional issues. The need for robust protections against coercion of seriously ill people were raised in good faith during the Bill’s passage through the Commons and the appropriate guardrails against coercion, stronger than in any other jurisdictions permitting assisted dying including Canada, are securely integrated into the Bill.
A particularly egregious stalling tactic was the introduction of the strawman of the role of artificial intelligence in assisted dying by Therese Coffey who in toto put down 95 out of 1,227 amendments. She “put down quite a blunt amendment” to ensure that AI would be prohibited from any involvement in assisted dying. For an hour, peers speculated around such scenarios as future chatbots or algorithmic advertising or even a putative artificial general intelligence pushing people towards assisted death, or coercing people into suicide or that doctors may be fooled by fake voice recordings. Other peers pointed out that since many diseases are now partly diagnosed with AI assistance, since paralysed patients communicate using AI tools tracking their eye blinks and since AI is used to analyse GP records to uncover patterns of illness – not to mention transcribe video calls - Coffey’s amendment would make the law entirely unworkable. In the event, Coffey withdrew this amendment – like all of its 65 predecessors – after Charles Falconer, the bill’s sponsor in the Lords, promised in his response to the debate to draft an amendment dealing with digital advertising. In the opinion of Hannah Slater, a 38 year old with a three year-old son who was told last summer that she had twelve months to live after her breast cancer had spread to her brain and who would like to decide on the manner of her death, such amendments belong to secondary legislation and definitely not part of the Lords debate and which were for her “clearly a filibuster”.[3]
Another potentially complicating factor in the Lords passage of the Bill is the internal politics of the Labour Party with dozens of backbench Labour opponents of the Bill having written to the party’s chief whip Jonathan Reynolds urging him to ensure MPs are not called back to Parliament to vote on the possibly returned Bill during the campaigning period before Scottish and Welsh legislative and English local government elections on 6 May at which Labour are projected to suffer serious losses. In the words of one of these backbenchers: “While there is obviously some latent support for assistant dying, it isn’t core to what Labour was elected to do.”[4]
The violation of the fundamental tenets democratic decision making whereby an unelected upper chamber can try to override a decision by the elected lower chamber on any issue is thus a fundamental affront to anyone of a democratic persuasion. But it is the potential real-life impacts on the lived experience of those who desire a peaceful death to end a life of intolerable life. In the words of the tetraplegic Melanie Reid, the ideologues in the Lords who claim to be acting on behalf of a vulnerability minority (while defying the will of the majority) but who are actually using bad-faith tactics, presumably seeking to sabotage liberal democracy and to perform a tribute act for the “good old days when Britain was great and suicide was a criminal act.|” For, in Reid’s opinion:
To briefly reprise the history of the assisted dying bill, properly known as The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, would allow mentally competent adults who are expected to die within six months - and who express “a clear, settled and informed wish to end their own life” - to get help to do so. Two doctors would have to agree as to their eligibility and a High Court judge would have to be satisfied as to the absence of any coercion. It was passed by a free and historic vote in the House of Commons in June 2025. It is opposed by Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary and Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary.
The violation of the fundamental tenets democratic decision making whereby an unelected upper chamber can try to override a decision by the elected lower chamber on any issue is thus a fundamental affront to anyone of a democratic persuasion. But it is the potential real-life impacts on the lived experience of those who desire a peaceful death to end a life of intolerable life. In the words of the tetraplegic Melanie Reid, the ideologues in the Lords who claim to be acting on behalf of a vulnerability minority (while defying the will of the majority).
Since then, a small group of peers have delivered more than a thousand amendments and delivered lengthy speeches, leading to accusations of the grand old delaying tactic of filibustering which Irish Home Rule Party MPs used to such infuriating effect (to opponents of Home Rule) in the Commons in the 19th century and by both Democrats and Republicans in state legislatures up and down the USA.
On Friday, the Bill’s eighth committee stage debate was upheld in the Lords; a further six are scheduled, keeping it in the upper chamber until late April. However it must clear all its remaining stages in parliament before the end of the current session, probably in May, or it will automatically fail.[1]
Analysis by the Observer shows that six peers are responsible for half the amendments: Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson; the former Health Secretary (and bon viveur drinker and cigar smoker) Therese Coffey; Ilora Finlay, a professor of palliative and former president of the Royal Society of Medicine; Alex Carlile KC, the former independent reviewer of antiterrorist legislation, Guy Mansfield (Lord Sandhurst) and Paul or Lord Goodman of Wycombe, who have tabled 623 amendments between them. During the first seven debates, opponents have taken up 90% of the debating time, according to Humanists UK, prominent Bill supporters.[2]
The sincerity of prominent disability campaigner and former Paralympic medallist Tanni Grey-Thompson and her concerns around disability matters as it relates to assisted dying cannot be dismissed. Nor can the expertise in palliative care of Professor Finlay be ignored. However most of the amendments amount to arguments against Common decisions at the heart of the Bill rather than technical revisions which raise fundamental constitutional issues. The need for robust protections against coercion of seriously ill people were raised in good faith during the Bill’s passage through the Commons and the appropriate guardrails against coercion, stronger than in any other jurisdictions permitting assisted dying including Canada, are securely integrated into the Bill.
A particularly egregious stalling tactic was the introduction of the strawman of the role of artificial intelligence in assisted dying by Therese Coffey who in toto put down 95 out of 1,227 amendments. She “put down quite a blunt amendment” to ensure that AI would be prohibited from any involvement in assisted dying. For an hour, peers speculated around such scenarios as future chatbots or algorithmic advertising or even a putative artificial general intelligence pushing people towards assisted death, or coercing people into suicide or that doctors may be fooled by fake voice recordings. Other peers pointed out that since many diseases are now partly diagnosed with AI assistance, since paralysed patients communicate using AI tools tracking their eye blinks and since AI is used to analyse GP records to uncover patterns of illness – not to mention transcribe video calls - Coffey’s amendment would make the law entirely unworkable. In the event, Coffey withdrew this amendment – like all of its 65 predecessors – after Charles Falconer, the bill’s sponsor in the Lords, promised in his response to the debate to draft an amendment dealing with digital advertising. In the opinion of Hannah Slater, a 38 year old with a three year-old son who was told last summer that she had twelve months to live after her breast cancer had spread to her brain and who would like to decide on the manner of her death, such amendments belong to secondary legislation and definitely not part of the Lords debate and which were for her “clearly a filibuster”.[3]
Another potentially complicating factor in the Lords passage of the Bill is the internal politics of the Labour Party with dozens of backbench Labour opponents of the Bill having written to the party’s chief whip Jonathan Reynolds urging him to ensure MPs are not called back to Parliament to vote on the possibly returned Bill during the campaigning period before Scottish and Welsh legislative and English local government elections on 6 May at which Labour are projected to suffer serious losses. In the words of one of these backbenchers: “While there is obviously some latent support for assistant dying, it isn’t core to what Labour was elected to do.”[4]
The violation of the fundamental tenets democratic decision making whereby an unelected upper chamber can try to override a decision by the elected lower chamber on any issue is thus a fundamental affront to anyone of a democratic persuasion. But it is the potential real-life impacts on the lived experience of those who desire a peaceful death to end a life of intolerable life. In the words of the tetraplegic Melanie Reid, the ideologues in the Lords who claim to be acting on behalf of a vulnerability minority (while defying the will of the majority) but who are actually using bad-faith tactics, presumably seeking to sabotage liberal democracy and to perform a tribute act for the “good old days when Britain was great and suicide was a criminal act.|” For, in Reid’s opinion:
They have no understanding of desperation, or what it’s like to endure the privations of the NHS without the connections to pull strings, or poverty and powerlessness.
Not for them, the experience of “being trapped in a paralysed body I hate, fighting co-morbidities and chronic pain.”[5]
Not for the unelected moral guardians in the Lords, also the continuing trauma for affected families being forced:
Not for the unelected moral guardians in the Lords, also the continuing trauma for affected families being forced:
to watch the terminally ill people they love and care for spend hours, sometimes days and weeks, dying slowly in agony, when even the best palliative care fails to alleviate their pain.
Or in a parallel with the cruel anti-abortion laws in both parts of Ireland which forced thousands of Irish women (if they had the financial resources to do so) to make the lonely journey to Britain to terminate their pregnancies with no appropriate after care. If patients are rich enough they have to fly alone to die in Dignitas, in Switzerland:
unable to say their last goodbye to those they love because the current cruel criminal law means their loved ones would then be investigated by the police for murder.[6]
Ultimately, the Parliament Act can be used to force the Assisted Dying Bill into law. But before this democratic act of force majeure can be enacted, how many pain racked individuals will die in agony in a manner not of their choosing. Should the Bill fail to reach the statute book in the prescribed manner, then it will be the House of Lords who receive a terminal blow to its legitimacy and hopefully existence.
References
[1] Catherine Neilan, Filibustering Lords seek to slow-talk the assisted dying bill to its doom. The Observer. 1 February 2026, p.7
[2] James Tapper and Katie Riley, Six Lords a-speaking: the peers whose long debates may yet end the hopes of those who choose to die. The Observer. 1 February 2026.
[1] Catherine Neilan, Filibustering Lords seek to slow-talk the assisted dying bill to its doom. The Observer. 1 February 2026, p.7
[2] James Tapper and Katie Riley, Six Lords a-speaking: the peers whose long debates may yet end the hopes of those who choose to die. The Observer. 1 February 2026.
Assisted dying The plot against democracy pp.8-9.
[3] Ibid
[4] Neilan, op cit.
[5] Melanie Reid, Death doesn’t scare me but let me decide when it’s time to end the pain. The Observer. 1 February 2026 p.9
[6] Esther Rantzen, It’s too late to help me, but please, my lords: spare others this needless pain. The Observer. 1 February 2026 p.7
[3] Ibid
[4] Neilan, op cit.
[5] Melanie Reid, Death doesn’t scare me but let me decide when it’s time to end the pain. The Observer. 1 February 2026 p.9
[6] Esther Rantzen, It’s too late to help me, but please, my lords: spare others this needless pain. The Observer. 1 February 2026 p.7
⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.
