Section 2 of the Parliament Act 1911 permits a bill to be presented for Royal Assent without the consent of the House of Lords provided certain conditions are satisfied. Most importantly, the Commons must pass the same bill in two successive parliamentary sessions, and the Lords must fail to pass it in on both occasions, either by rejecting it outright or by not completing its consideration of the bill.

The identical bill requirement means that the version of the bill passed by the Commons in the second session must be textually identical to the version it passed in the first session with two caveats: minor technical changes can be made arising from the passage of time, and amendments agreed by the Lords in the first session may be incorporated.

For the assisted dying bill to qualify for use of the Parliament Act, the starting point must therefore be the text passed by the Commons at Third Reading on 20 June 2025.

A question then arises: what can MPs do if they identify technical defects in that version of the bill, or if they want to insert additional safeguards or offer concessions to the Lords, but still wish to preserve the possibility that the Parliament Act may be used if peers once again talk out the bill?

The Parliament Act anticipated that problem with the “suggested amendment” procedure.

Section 2(4) of the Parliament Act provides that the Commons, when sending the bill to the Lords in the second session, may also send with it a list of “suggested amendments”. These suggestions do not alter the text of the bill as passed by the Commons, thereby preserving the identical bill requirement. Instead, the suggested amendments are sent to the Lords in a separate document or message.

If the House of Lords fails to pass the bill in the second session, then the Parliament Act may still be used. If, however, the Lords agrees to one or more of the Commons’ suggested amendments, the Parliament Act allows the Bill to be enacted with those suggested amendments incorporated.

The Commons therefore need not necessarily choose between two unattractive options: preserving an unchanged bill with possible defects in order to retain the protection of the Parliament Act, or amending the bill in the normal way, thus losing its identical status and forfeiting the possibility of using the Parliament Act.

Suggested amendments are a bespoke procedure used only in relation to bills that may engage the Parliament Act and are therefore used only rarely. They are not tabled as amendments at Committee or Report Stage in the Commons, and do not form part of the normal legislative process in either House.

On the four previous occasions when the House of Commons has considered suggested amendments, only a small number have been proposed to the House. During the most recent use of the Parliament Act, in relation to the Hunting Act 2004, the House of Commons proposed just one suggested amendment to the House of Lords. There is, however, no reason why the House could not consider a larger number of motions, particularly given that the suggested amendments procedure permits a single motion to incorporate multiple related amendments to the text of a bill.

Once the Commons has sent suggested amendments to the Lords, peers may decide upon them at any point during its passage through the House, including before Committee Stage has begun or while Committee Stage is ongoing. That means that delays to the ordinary legislative process in the Lords would not prevent the House from considering the suggested amendments sent from the Commons.

The Lords would need to debate and decide upon each suggested amendment, but the number of suggestions would be far smaller than the number of regular amendments, making them much harder to filibuster. The Parliament Act also imposes a duty on the House of Lords to “consider” suggestions from the Commons, which the Lords would no doubt take very seriously.

Because the Parliament Act prevents the Lords from stopping the bill by talking it out, and because the suggested amendments procedure itself cannot be avoided by peers, the Commons would effectively have the option of proposing an amended version of the bill without sacrificing the protection afforded by the Parliament Act.

The suggested amendments procedure would allow the Commons to assemble a package of technical corrections, drafting improvements, additional safeguards and changes that acknowledge the concerns raised by the House of Lords in the last session. This could include some of the 77 amendments tabled by Lord Falconer, which seek to address issues relating to eating disorders, the breadth of delegated powers, and the adequacy of safeguards. It would also provide MPs opposed to the bill with a further opportunity to seek to remedy provisions they regard as unsafe or defective by tabling suggestions of their own.

The House of Lords would in turn be able to consider those suggestions and indicate which, if any, it was willing to accept. This would give peers an opportunity to vote on issues that were never put to a decision during the bill’s earlier passage through the Lords.

There is, however, a significant practical obstacle. Although the suggested amendments procedure is not unprecedented, it has been used only rarely. As a result, neither House’s Standing Orders provide a ready-made mechanism for considering such amendments.

In practice, therefore, the Commons is unlikely to have an opportunity to propose and decide upon suggested amendments unless the Government makes time available for it to do so. This could be achieved through the allocation of Government time or the scheduling of an additional Friday sitting, with a Business of the House or programme motion setting out the necessary procedural arrangements.

The Government might reasonably take the view that it should not facilitate such a process unless the Commons has first indicated that it is prepared, if necessary, to use the Parliament Act. But if MPs vote to support the assisted dying bill again at Second Reading in September, the Commons would also be confirming its support in principle for using the Parliament Act if it becomes necessary to do so.

In these circumstances, to facilitate the expressed wish of the House and to ensure that the process envisaged by the Parliament Act is not frustrated, the Government ought to table the motion required to provide the time and procedural arrangements necessary for suggested amendments to be considered.

Doing so would not require the Government to endorse the bill, the principle of assisted dying, or any particular suggested amendment. It would merely be giving MPs an opportunity to consider and decide on changes to the bill that they wish to suggest to the Lords.

Governments have often enabled the House of Commons to reach decisions on contentious matters of conscience despite having no collective position of their own. Sometimes, they have introduced legislation and simply given MPs a free vote. On other occasions, they have provided additional parliamentary time for Private Members’ Bills while remaining neutral on the substance of the proposals.

In these cases, the Government was not necessarily fulfilling a manifesto commitment. Rather, a constitutional principle was at stake: where the House of Commons wished to decide an important question of conscience, but lacked an adequate parliamentary opportunity to do so, the Government, which controls the Order Paper and therefore the agenda of the House, recognised a responsibility to provide that opportunity.

The suggested amendment procedure offers a means of applying that same principle here. It would not determine the outcome of the assisted dying bill, nor require the Government to take a position on its merits. It would simply ensure that MPs are able to consider the full range of options that the Parliament Act was designed to make available. In doing so, it would give the Commons a genuine choice and reduce the risk that either House is driven into a position it would not otherwise have chosen.