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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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 special series of podcasts, tracing the progress of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, the bill that will enable assisted dying in England and Wales.

And we're recording just hours after the latest section of debate on the bill. The first day of its report stage consideration has ended, with some people who support the bill saying that they're now over the hump. The most difficult section of debate has now been dealt with, even if a few of the votes haven't yet happened.

Ruth Fox: Yes, Mark, [00:01:00] it was, well, it was a techier than, certainly the second reading, and some of what we saw in public bill committee. It was quite a difficult debate at times and a sense that a few people were quite close to losing their temper and some others quite emotional.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, indeed it was, a different tone of debate.

They said after the second reading debate, this is parliament at its best, which is the MP's sort of backslapping self congratulation of it. We've all been polite to one another today. This was not so polite. There was definitely more kind of subliminal suggestion of bad faith from the other side. Coming from both sides of the debate. And a certain amount of nastiness and just a tinge of procedural gameplay as well. You know, divisions were forced and then went on longer than usual and

Ruth Fox: A bit of foot dragging in the division lobbies.

Mark D'Arcy: Foot dragging in the division lobbies. The kind of old school time wasting tactics that I used to spend many a long Private Members Bill Friday watching in my Today In Parliament days, and here we are again with the same old games being played.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and I think the Sergeant at Arms was sent out into the [00:02:00] division lobby, I think a couple of times to find out what was going on.

Mark D'Arcy: It wasn't allowed to drag on too long.

Mr. Speaker Hoyle was pretty diligent in making sure that after 15 minutes had elapsed, you know, he'd make sure that they weren't gonna let it drag on.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, yeah.

Mark D'Arcy: So he didn't indulge the game playing.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. No, it was a very different tone of the debate, I have to say. I don't think Esther Rantzen has helped.