Hansard Society

• The assisted dying bill: How does the amendment process work?

• Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill: Concerns about the delegated powers

• Assisted dying - The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill: Rolling news

• The Assisted Dying Bill: A guide to the Private Member's Bill process

• The Assisted Dying Bill: Making sense of the parliamentary process [Video]

Parliament

• Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill: Bill documents

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Intro: [00:00:00] You are listening to Parliament Matters at Hansard Society production supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk/pm..

Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.

Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy. And welcome to the latest in our series of special mini pods following the detailed progress of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, the bill that will allow assisted dying.

This week we're gonna preview the Report Stage of the bill, the latest rite of passage in its legislative process. This has been a bit of a moving target. Originally, Report Stage was scheduled for today, the day we're recording Friday the 25th of April, but Kim Leadbeater, the promoter of the bill, has now delayed report until Friday the 16th of May.

She [00:01:00] says it's because MPs need more time to consider amendments made at the Public Bill Committee stage. It's also worth noting incidentally that the impact assessment the government has promised for the bill still hasn't been published. We're still waiting for that and hoping that it arrives before that vital report stage.

Ruth Fox: So we're delighted again this week to be joined by our resident parliamentary procedural guru, Mr. Paul Evans, a former senior clerk in the House of Commons, and a longstanding member of the Hansard Society to unpack this next stage of the legislative process and uncover what may or may not happen at report stage.

So Paul, as Mark just said, Report's now gonna be the 16th of May, which is gonna be that first opportunity for all the MPs who were not on the public bill committee to speak and vote on proposed amendments and new clauses that they'd like to see in the bill. It's often at Report Stage that private members' bills face some of the most challenging procedural hurdles and we'll come on to some of that.

But before we start, can we sort of just [00:02:00] unpack what is the purpose of report stage and how does it differ to committee stage?