The Hansard Society has released a new episode of its Parliament Matters podcast, looking at the events that took place on the first day of Report Stage. Given that proponents of the Bill got it through unscathed, with comfortable majorities in each vote, we ask: Is Kim Leadbeater's Bill now over the hump?

Joined by former House of Commons Clerk Paul Evans, we analyse the procedural elements of Friday's debate and votes, and look to the challenges that lie ahead on the next day of Report Stage.

Listen to the episode here

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

  • What will happen at Report Stage?

  • What will happen at Third Reading?

  • What will happen in the House of Lords?

• Parliament Matters podcast: A conversation with Kim Leadbeater MP (9 May 2025)

• Parliament Matters podcast: Understanding Report Stage (29 April 2025)

The Speaker has made his provisional selection and grouping of amendments for tomorrow's Report Stage debate. He has chosen to structure the proceedings into two groups. Grouping of amendments is intended to provide a coherent, efficient structure to the proceedings and to avoid repetitious and incomprehensible debates. However, it has become commonplace in recent years – for Private Members' Bills as well as Government bills – for the Speaker to group all proposed amendments and new clauses into one single group for debate. So two groups is something of a departure from recent practice.

The division of the amendments into two groups won't make a lot of difference to the focus of the debate but it will have implications for the use of the time available for debate. Two groups of amendments for debate and decision means that the 'closure' will have to be sought twice tomorrow to bring debate on each group to an end before proceeding to decisions on the new clauses and amendments as required. See our guide to the PMB process for an explanation of how the 'closure' works and why it matters. Two groups may mean that Report Stage consideration runs into a second day, likely to be Friday 13 June.

Following the expiry of the three day notice deadline for the tabling of amendments on Tuesday evening, the Commons authorities have also published an updated amendment paper in which the amendments are arranged in the order in which it is expected they will be decided during Friday's proceedings.

The updated amendment paper shows that Kim Leadbeater MP, sponsor of the Bill, has tabled further proposed changes to it in advance of Friday's Report Stage debate. She has tabled 8 new clauses and 38 amendments to the Bill to date. These include substantive policy changes, for example stronger conscience protections for healthcare professionals, a ban on advertising, and provisions to ensure the legislation is workable and legally sound, some of which will be technical amendments requested by the Government in order to make it workable. The deadline for amendments to be tabled expired at the rise of the House yesterday evening so a further updated amendment paper may be published in the next 24-hours.

The Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill, a Private Members' BIll introduced by the Liberal Democrat MSP Liam McArthur, passed the first stage of the Scottish legislative process today - a debate on the general principles of the Bill - by a majority of 14 votes. Seventy MSPs voted in favour of the Bill, 56 against and 1 MSP abstained. Two previous attempts to introduce an assisted dying law, in 2010 and 2015, failed to garner sufficient support to get beyond this first stage.

You can watch today's debate in full on the Scottish Parliament's website.

As at Westminster, the Scottish Government is neutral on the Bill and MSPs had a free vote on the issue. A majority of Labour and Conservative MSPs voted against the Bill; a majority of SNP MSPs voted in favour of the Bill. The Scottish Health Secretary, Neil Gray, who will be tasked with implementing the Bill if it passes all its stages in the Parliament, was the one MSP who abstained. First Minster John Swinney, and Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes both oppose the Bill as does the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar. The Conservative Party leader Russell Findlay and the Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton both support the Bill, as do the co-leaders of the Green Party, Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater.

The Bill will now be referred by the Parliamentary Bureau to a Committee, likely to be the lead committee that looked at the Bill at the beginning of the stage one process, namely the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee. It will be tasked with considering amendments to the Bill. It is not yet confirmed when stage two scrutiny will begin but the rules require at least a 12-sitting day interval between the two stages.

In advance of next week's Report Stage debate the Commons Library has published a 102-page briefing on the Bill. It explores the background to the Bill, the Impact Assessment and the parliamentary process and timetable. It then explores the amendments made to the Bill in the Public Bill Committee. The briefing cites the work our team here at the Hansard Society on a number of occasions.

Yesterday, the co-hosts of our podcast, our Director Dr Ruth Fox and the BBC's former parliamentary correspondent, Mark D'Arcy sat down with Kim Leadbeater MP in her Westminster office to discuss the bill a week before it returns to the House of Commons for the critical Report Stage where all MPs will have the opportunity to consider further amendments to the Bill. You can listen to the episode on your favourite podcast app or watch a captioned episode on YouTube.

We discuss:

• Why the delay? Kim explains her decision to postpone the Report Stage from April to allow MPs time to digest the substantial changes made during Bill Committee.

• Parliamentary strategy and safeguards: With the Report Stage often being a major hurdle for Private Members' Bills, Kim outlines her legislative strategy, including new amendments she plans to table. These include strengthened conscience protections for healthcare professionals, limits on advertising, and procedural clarifications.

• Government support and operational readiness: Kim reflects on her collaboration with civil servants and the government’s neutral stance, noting expected amendments to enhance the Bill’s operability.

• Impact Assessment insights: We discuss the long-awaited Government Impact Assessment — its projections, financial implications, and how MPs are (or aren’t) reacting to it.

• Timetable pressures and political realities: We explore the tight procedural timeline, the potential need for multiple sitting Fridays in the coming weeks to complete the Bill's remaining stages, and whether there is going to be an extended parliamentary session which will create more time to allow the Bill to complete its passage.

• Social media abuse and respectful debate: Kim shares her personal experiences with the emotionally charged and, at times, hostile debate around assisted dying, emphasising the importance of maintaining respectful political discourse.

• What next? We look ahead to the Bills prospects in the House of Lords and how MPs’ attendance and votes will be crucial to determining the Bill’s fate on the 16 May.

One item of note in the Impact Assessment published last week is that the Government anticipates and is planning on the basis that the Bill, if approved by Parliament, will secure Royal Assent in October 2025 and all provisions will come into effect at the latest four years later, so in October 2029 (see paragraph 44). This strongly suggests that the parliamentary Session will not end before the Summer recess but last at least until the Autumn. If so, more time can be provided for the Bill to complete its scrutiny stages in the House of Lords beyond July.

Until now, we have assumed that Friday 11 July—the 13th and final Friday allocated for Private Members’ Bills this Session—would mark the deadline for the Bill to complete its scrutiny. However, if the Session is extended beyond the 12-month anniversary of the last King's Speech, additional time for scrutiny could become available. For this to happen, the Government will need to act, as the current Standing Orders only allow for 13 sitting Fridays per Session. To create more opportunities in the Autumn for debating Private Members’ Bills, the Leader of the House of Commons, Lucy Powell MP, would need to table a motion proposing further Friday sittings, subject to the House’s agreement.

A Delegated Powers Memorandum (DPM) is published by the Government to identify the provisions in a Bill that grant powers to Ministers to make delegated legislation, usually in the form of Statutory Instruments. As well as explaining why the Government is seeking delegated legislative authority, the document should also explain why the powers are needed and set out the parliamentary scrutiny procedure that should apply to the exercise of each power. The DPM for each Bill is produced for scrutiny by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in the House of Lords. There is no equivalent committee in the House of Commons.

The DPM for the assisted dying bill confirms that there are 38 delegated powers in the 55 clause Bill, 34 of which confer power on Ministers and the Chief Medical Officer to make regulations. Five of the 38 powers are Henry VIII powers, which confer power on Ministers to amend, repeal, or otherwise alter the effect of primary legislation by delegated legislation.

The Bill also creates nine criminal offences to “target various behaviours that undermine or abuse the legal assisted dying process, in order to provide safeguards for those seeking an assisted death.”

The Impact Assessment includes a wide range of cost and savings estimates, reflecting the challenges of conducting a cost-benefit analysis for a policy that is still being developed and lacks comparable domestic examples.

The Government estimates the chief costs as follows:

• the initial education campaign: £550K to £850K + £50K recurring annually;

• training NHS staff: £1.23 million to £11.5 million in Year 1 rising to £1.53 million to £9.71 million in Year 10;

• Voluntary Assisted Dying Commissioner and panel approval process: an average of £10.9 million to £13.6 million per year;

• the Assisted Dying Review Panel – each panel will cost approximately £2,000 per day giving an average annual cost of between £900k and £3.6 million over 10 years (this does not include any wider administrative costs of convening and running the panels, or the estates costs.)

The Impact Assessment estimates that the reduced cost "from unutilised healthcare" will be between £919K to £10.3 million in Year 1, to between £5.84 million and £59.6 million in Year 10. This estimate includes savings on hospital care (both emergency and non-emergency), primary and community care, hospice, medicines and other care costs.

The Government has no official statistics in England and Wales on the number of terminally ill adults there are, nor the cost of their palliative or end of life care. As a result the Impact Assessment includes comparisons made with other jurisdictions. There are caveats, however, as some of these jurisdictions do not have data for a long enough period to provide meaningful trend data.

The Impact Assessment notes that 38% of applicants completed the assisted dying application process in New Zealand; 66% in Maine and California. It assumes, in order to undertake the cost benefit analysis, that in the UK 60% of applicants will complete the process. It estimates that:

• the number of applicants will range from between 273 to 1,311 in Year 1 (half-year), to between 1,737 to 7,598 in Year 10;

• if 60% of applicants complete the process, that would result in between 164 to 787 assisted deaths in Year 1 (half-year), rising to between 1,042 and 4,559 assisted deaths in Year 10; and

• to complete the 10-step assisted dying application process at least six members of health and social care staff will typically be required for a total of 32 hours.

It's not ideal timing, the day before the bank holiday weekend, but the Government published a tranche of long-awaited supporting documents to help MPs with their scrutiny of the Bill at Report Stage later this month.

The four documents are jointly published by the Department of Health and Social Care and the Ministry of Justice:

• Impact Assessment;

• Equality Impact Assessment;

• Human Rights (ECHR) Memorandum; and

• Delegated Powers Memorandum.

In September 2021 the Liberal Democrat MSP Liam McArthur lodged a draft Members Bill (the Scottish equivalent of a Private Members' Bill) to enable mentally competent terminally ill adults in Scotland to voluntarily choose to be provided with assistance by health professionals to end their lives. A three month consultation followed and elicited over 14,000 responses. Having been given formal permission in October 2022 to introduce the Bill the sponsoring MSP undertook a further period of consultation with experts, lawyers and legislative drafters, aided by a Medical Advisory Group and the Parliament's Non-Government Bills Unit. His final Bill was formally presented to the Parliament in March 2024 and the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee was designated as the lead committee to undertake the initial Stage One scrutiny of the Bill. The Committee published its report today and a Stage One debate on the general principles of the Bill will now be scheduled for a later date, at which point all MSPs will be asked to take a view on whether the legislation should proceed for amendment and further consideration. Previous efforts to introduce an assisted dying bill at Holyrood in 2010 and 2013 did not got further than Stage One.

Liam McArthur's bill differs from Kim Leadbeater's bill in some important respects. For example, it does not include a timescale for life expectancy, the minimum age is 16, and there is a residence criteria which requires that applicants must have lived in Scotland for at least 12 months.

Having cleared detailed scrutiny in a Public Bill Committee, the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill faces its next crucial test when it returns to the House of Commons for Report Stage on 16 May. This stage is often where Private Members' Bills falter. Will opponents of Kim Leadbeater’s proposals to legalise assisted dying win enough support to amend the Bill? Can supporters of the Bill fend off attempts to change it? And could the Bill be lost altogether, because of the procedural hurdles that still stand in its way?

In this edition of Parliament Matters, our resident procedural expert Paul Evans joins our presenters Ruth Fox and Mark D'Arcy to unravel the intricate mysteries of Report Stage procedure. Drawing on his experience as a former senior House of Commons Clerk, Paul highlights the hidden dangers posed not only by opposition to the assisted dying bill but also by a seemingly unrelated Private Members' Bill aimed at regulating the importation of ferrets. He also explains how amendments are selected and grouped for debate, how the debate itself is structured, and how opponents of the assisted dying bill might exploit parliamentary rules in an attempt to thwart its progress.

Before the House of Commons rises for the Easter recess tomorrow, Kim Leadbeater has written to all MPs informing them that the Report Stage debate on her bill will not now take place on 25 April but will instead be delayed until Friday 16 May.

Her letter states, "I have listened carefully to members on all sides of the issue who have told me that they would welcome more time to consider the amendments to the bill in committee, to see the new version of the bill as a result of these important changes, and other related matters." Another likely reason for the delay is that, as her letter confirms, the Government's Impact Assessment, which was promised in advance of Report Stage, is not ready for publication this week.

The House of Commons has published a compilation of the Official Report of each sitting of the Public Bill Committee. The document runs to 852 pages!

The clause-by-clause scrutiny and amendment of the assisted dying bill by its Public Bill Committee finished at 12:26am this morning after a marathon final sitting which began at 2:00pm yesterday. In total the Committee has held 29 sittings across 15 days between 21 January and 25 March. No other Private Members' Bill in recent history has been subject to so much scrutiny. at Committee stage. One hundred and ten divisions were held over the course of the PBCs work, 39 of them during this final sitting alone. The Bill will now be reprinted to reflect the amendments made to it by the Committee and will be reported back to the House on Friday 25 April when all MPs will have an opportunity to debate and vote on further amendments to the Bill.

A Private Member's Bill introduced by Alex Allinson has been approved by the Legislative Council (the parliament's revising chamber) following earlier, extensive scrutiny by the House of Keys (the parliament's elected house). The Bill was first introduced by Allinson, a House of Keys member, in October 2023 and provides that someone may be eligible for an assisted death if they are terminally ill and "reasonably expected" to die within 12 months. Applicants must be over 18 years of age, be registered with a GP in the Isle of Man, and have been resident on the island for five years. The person must also be deemed to have legal capacity to make the decision, and the decision must be verified by two independent doctors.

We are disappointed here at the Hansard Society that the Committee chose not to strengthen parliamentary oversight of some of the regulations concerning the drugs to be used in assisted deaths, an issue we flagged in our briefing on the delegated powers in the Bill. Indeed, Committee member Danny Kruger MP quoted at length from our briefing during the debate.

The Bill does not specify which drugs, or other substances, may be provided to patients for the purpose of an assisted death. Instead, the Secretary of State is required by clause 20(1) to specify in regulations one or more ‘approved substances’ which doctors will be authorised to supply to patients who have chosen to end their own life in accordance with the Act. The power is non-discretionary, meaning that the Secretary of State must specify at least one approved substance. Any regulations made under the power will be subject to the negative scrutiny procedure, so a debate and approval vote in Parliament will not be required. The regulations specifying the substance(s) will be laid before Parliament after being made into law by the Minister and if neither House passes a motion to reject the regulations within 40-days, then Parliament will be deemed to have consented to them.

The problem is that no fixed parliamentary time is allocated to debate a motion to reject regulations subject to the negative procedure (known as a ‘prayer’ motion). Government control of the Commons timetable means MPs are dependent on the Government agreeing to grant time for such a debate. Amendment 467 would have changed the regulation-making procedure from the negative to the affirmative scrutiny procedure. This would require MPs to actively debate and vote to approve the regulations before they come into force. As set out in our Briefing, the House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee recommended this higher scrutiny procedure in 2021 when Baroness Meacher presented an assisted dying bill. And the most recent bill from Lord Falconer had the affirmative scrutiny procedure in it. The Minister Stephen Kinnock argued that the amendment should be rejected because it would “increase the timeline for legal and operational delivery of the approved list of substances and might impact the two-year commencement period”. But this argument doesn't hold up. The Government can schedule debates and approval votes in both Houses within two to three days of laying regulations before Parliament when needed.

Alternatively, as we highlighted in our briefing, the made affirmative scrutiny procedure could have been used. Ministers could act swiftly but Parliament would have to debate and approve the regulations retrospectively. This is an imperfect compromise but it would provide more opportunity for oversight than that offered by the negative scrutiny procedure. Why does this matter? It means the approval of substances for assisted dying will be entirely at Ministerial discretion and will not be subject to parliamentary oversight. ut this is not the last word. If the Bill is eventually approved at 3rd Reading it will go to the House of Lords where the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee will report on it and may reopen the issue in line with their recommendations in 2021.

In a statement issued on social media, Naz Shah explained why she had to leave the Public Bill Committee before it completed its work this evening.

"I didn’t want to but had to because my hearing aids need to recharge after 15 hours use and without them I cannot hear or take part in the committee. Hearing isn’t a choice for me. I’ve raised this issue repeatedly with members of the committee and it’s sad that I’m unable to continue today. I have chosen to give up a lot, especially during Ramadan, to make sure I can contribute in this committee and in politics. I wanted to stay as long as I could for these hugely important discussions and it is frustrating that I cannot because of my disability."

Private Members' Bills are not timetabled (subject to a Programme Order) so the Public Bill Committee has no formal deadline by which it must complete its work. The Committee’s proceedings will continue until it has considered and dispensed with every amendment proposed, and voted on whether or not to include every clause and schedule in the Bill.

However, the Bill’s sponsor, Kim Leadbeater, and her supporters on the Committee will be aiming to complete the work in time for the first available Private Members' Bill Friday on which Report Stage - the next phase of scrutiny - takes precedence: Friday 25 April 2025. If this deadline is missed, the already limited time available for Peers to scrutinise the Bill – should it be approved by MPs and sent to the House of Lords – will be further reduced. This would create significant time pressures unless Ministers intervene to allocate Government time for the remaining proceedings, easing the constraints imposed by the limited number of PMB sitting Fridays permitted under Standing Orders each Session.

The House of Commons is in recess from Wednesday 9 April to Monday 21 April. The recommended minimum interval between Committee and Report Stage in the Commons is seven days. If adhered to this would mean the Committee concluding its proceedings at the latest on the final available sitting day before recess, namely Tuesday 8 April 2025.

Unless the Committee changes its current meeting schedule (sitting twice a day on Tuesdays and Wednesdays) this means there are at most 14 sittings left.

Is the Committee on track to complete its work on this schedule?

At first glance, the Committee may appear to be behind schedule, having agreed to only 12 of the Bill’s 43 clauses in its 16 sittings so far. However, the structure of debate on any bill in Committee is centred around a process known as 'grouping', whereby related amendments and new clauses are grouped and debated collectively. This grouping is updated before each sitting to reflect newly tabled amendments, withdrawn or de-selected amendments, and any other necessary changes to the grouping. Crucially, amendments to later clauses in a bill may be grouped with amendments to earlier sections of the bill where - for example, if they are related in terms of content or if the provisions later in the bill are consequential on other provisions set out earlier in the bill. This means debate at Committee Stage tends to be concentrated around the earlier clauses of a bill.

So far, the Committee has debated 54 groups of amendments. According to the latest grouping, 49 groups of amendments - which formally relate to the final 31 clauses of the Bill - remain to be considered. However, additional groupings may be added when new amendments are tabled. There are also six new clauses which are currently ungrouped, and which will also require debate.

Given that the Committee has handled 54 groups of amendments in 16 sittings, it seems plausible that it could dispense with the remaining 49 groups and six new clauses in the remaining 14 sittings that are available under the current schedule.

There is also evidence that the Committee has picked up the pace. In the first eight sittings it debated just 13 groups of amendments. However, in the subsequent eight sittings it debated a much larger 41 groups of amendments.

The later provisions of the Bill are also more technical and operational, and will raise fewer fundamental issues of principle, than the initial clauses, and may thus require less debate. The first three clauses, for example, concerned the eligibility criteria for assisted dying, the definition of terminal illness, and the assessment of mental capacity – topics that required extensive debate over several sittings. The last few clauses concern interpretation, the territorial extent of the Bill, the arrangements for its commencement and its short title – topics that will require much less discussion.

The controversial debate about the clauses concerning judicial oversight of the process has also now finished. However, certain later provisions - such as the creation of new offences related to coercion, the provision of assisted dying through the NHS, and the oversight of the Act by Chief Medical Officers - could still generate extended debate.

The table below provides a summary of the 29 groups of amendments outlined in the Chair's provisional selection. Debates will take place on each group in order. The table includes the amendments contained within each group, the theme covered by those amendments, and some details about the content of amendments within the group.

The amendments that are most likely to be put to a vote are the amendments from the Bill's sponsor, Kim Leadbeater MP. However, where an MP indicates a desire for their amendment(s) to be put to a vote, the Chair will normally allow a vote to take place. Votes do not need to take place on all of the amendments in a group. Where the Chair does allow an amendment to be voted on, the amendment will not necessarily be voted on at the end of the debate on its group; instead, amendments are voted on when the Committee reaches their position on the amendment paper.

Our guide to the amendment process explains the way in which the Committee will debate and decide on amendments in more detail.

The Chair's provisional selection and grouping of amendments have been published ahead of the Public Bill Committee's next sitting on Tuesday (11 February). This provisional selection covers only the first six clauses of the Bill and includes:

• 29 groups of amendments selected for consideration;

• 5 amendments withdrawn by their sponsors; and

• 4 amendments not selected for debate.

We explore the amendment process in the latest episode of our Parliament Matters podcast. Paul Evans CBE, former senior House of Commons clerk, provides an in-depth explanation, covering how amendments are selected and grouped, and the impact this has on debates and decisions in Committee.

In recent days, several MPs have published articles and letters expressing their views — both in support of and in opposition to — the Bill. Notable contributions include:

• Diane Abbott MP - Disability activists don’t support assisted dying – they know they'll be last in the queue for human decency (Politics Home, 7 February 2025)

• Jake Richards MP - Legislating for assisted dying is a monumental task – but it’s not beyond the capabilities of this Parliament (Politics Home, 7 February 2025)

• Jessica Asato MP, Antonia Bance MP, James Frith MP and Meg Hillier MP - Joint letter to MPs (6 February 2025)

The informal rule that amendments should be tabled at least three sitting days before they are considered by the Committee meant that yesterday evening was the deadline to submit amendments for the Committee's first sitting on Tuesday (11 February).

The final amendment paper for Tuesday' session includes 362 amendments and 13 new clauses, including 56 amendments tabled by the Bill's sponsor, Kim Leadbeater MP (see below).

On Monday, the chair of the Committee will publish a provisional 'selection and grouping' of amendments, setting out which amendments have been selected and how they will be grouped together for debate. This will give an indication of the order in which the Committee will debate the proposed amendments.

Today's amendment paper includes a significant number of new amendments, with the most notable being 56 amendments and new clauses tabled by the Bill's sponsor, Kim Leadbeater MP.

Many - if not most - of these 56 amendments are likely to have been influenced by the Government. Ministers have a "duty to the statute book" - a responsibility to ensure that legislation is legally sound and technically operable. In the case of Private Members' Bills, Ministers typically work with the Bill's sponsor to suggest necessary changes, which the sponsor then tables in their own name. It is preferable for the Government to propose any required changes during the Committee stage rather than waiting until the Report stage when the Bill returns to the full House for consideration. Report stage usually lasts just one day, unless additional time is set aside for it by the Government. If that limited time is consumed by discussion of Government amendments and subsequent votes (divisions), there may be little room for debate or votes on proposals from other MPs.

Kim Leadbeater's amendments would make some important changes to the Bill, including:

• Clarifying application: ensuring that only persons in England and Wales may be provided with assistance in accordance with the Act, and only medical practitioners in England and Wales can carry out the required roles at each stage of the process;

• Streamlining documentation: removing various forms and statements - previously detailed in the Bill's Schedules - that patients and doctors must complete at different stages of the process. Instead, the Secretary of State will have a delegated power to set out these forms in regulations;

• Enhancing reporting requirements: requiring both the first ('coordinating doctor') and second ('independent doctor') doctors to produce a report on their assessments. These reports must follow a format specified by the Secretary of State in regulations, and must be provided to the patient and to any other persons designated by the Secretary of State in regulations;

• Strengthening training requirements: changing the power to set additional training, qualifications and experience for coordinating and independent doctors from a discretionary power (which the Secretary of State "may" use to make regulations) to a mandatory duty ("must") to make such regulations ;

• Clarifying training content: ensuring that, at a minimum, regulations on training must cover capacity assessments and how to identify whether a person has been coerced or pressured into making a decision;

• Mandating consultation: requiring the Secretary of State to consult the Commission for Equality and Human Rights and such other persons as the Secretary of State considers appropriate before making regulations specifying (a) the training, qualifications and experience required by doctors involved in the process, or (b) the forms that must be signed by doctors and patients at various stages of the process;

• Enhancing parliamentary oversight: upgrading the parliamentary scrutiny procedure for any regulations specifying the necessary training, qualifications and experience required of doctors involved in the process, ensuring that a parliamentary debate and vote is required; and

• Delegating authority on training standards: allowing a person other than the Secretary of State, specified in regulations, to determine the specific training, qualifications and experience required by doctors involved at various stages of the process.

The Committee has now made public all 110 items of written evidence so far submitted by outside bodies and individuals. Evidence has been submitted by a number of prominent bodies, including:

• Royal College of Psychiatrists

• Royal College of General Practitioners

• British Medical Association

• Royal College of Nursing

• Royal Pharmaceutical Society

• Association of Anaesthetists

• Association for Palliative Medicine of Great Britain and Ireland

• General Medical Council

• Hospice UK

• Marie Curie

• The Bishop of London

• Humanists UK

• My Death, My Decision

• Care Not Killing

Further evidence may be submitted for as long as the Committee is considering the Bill.

You can read the submissions via the evidence tab on the Bill's 'Publications' page on the Parliament website.

The Public Bill Committee has wrapped up its three days of oral evidence hearings. If you missed any sessions, you can catch up with the recordings on Parliamentlive.tv and transcripts of all the sessions are also available.

• Tuesday 28 January

  • Morning session: Video / Transcript

  • Afternoon session: Video / Transcript

• Wednesday 29 January

  • Morning session: Video / Transcript

  • Afternoon session: Video / Transcript

• Thursday 30 January

  • Morning session: Video / Transcript

  • Afternoon session: Video / Transcript

The Committee has also begun publishing written evidence, prioritising submissions from those who provided oral testimony. You can explore the published evidence on the page dedicated to the Bill on Parliament's website.

To allow members more time to review what has been described as a large volume of evidence, the Committee has postponed the start of line-by-line scrutiny by a week. The rest of the written submissions are expected to be released in the coming days.

During today’s oral evidence session, Labour MP Daniel Francis raised a Point of Order, expressing concern over the absence of an Impact Assessment and other key documents. He suggested that the Committee's deliberations should be delayed until these materials are made available.

In response, Justice Minister Sarah Sackman MP, a member of the Committee, confirmed that the Government intends to publish these documents only after the Public Bill Committee completes its work. However, they will be available before the next stage of scrutiny - Report Stage - when all MPs will have the chance to review any amendments made by the Committee.

As the Committee knows, the Government are neutral on the Bill, but once the Committee has concluded its work and prior to Report, we are committed to publishing the ECHR memorandum, a delegated powers memorandum, the economic impact assessment that was committed to during the money resolution debate, and an assessment of the equalities impact of the Bill.

She explained that the timing is deliberate, ensuring that the assessments reflect the Bill in its final form as amended by the Committee. This approach, she noted, ensures that MPs will have full access to the relevant impact assessments before voting at Report Stage and Third Reading.

Further changes have been proposed to the Sittings Motion — the agreement that determines when the Committee will meet, which witnesses will give oral evidence, and at what times. Three new amendments have been tabled, in addition to the one reported yesterday. These changes are expected to be discussed during today’s meeting of the Committee meeting, though it’s unclear exactly when given the tight schedule for witness sessions. It is likely the Committee may defer these discussions until the end of the day, after the evidence sessions have concluded, particularly if there are disagreements necessitating debate.

The amendment paper for the Bill confirms that Kim Leadbeater has formally proposed adding Professor Emyr Lewis to the witness list for the final evidence session on Thursday, 30 January. Meanwhile, Diane Abbott MP has tabled her own amendment, proposing two additional witnesses for the same session: Richard Robinson, CEO of Hourglass (an organisation dedicated to preventing the abuse and exploitation of older people), and Cherry Henry-Leach from Standing Together Against Domestic Abuse (STADA). If adopted, this would increase the number of witnesses in the final hour of evidence on Thursday from two to four. However, as Diane Abbott is not a member of the Public Bill Committee, there is no guarantee her amendment will be selected for consideration by the Chair.

Kim Leadbeater has also tabled two further amendments to the Sittings Motion. The first seeks to add a representative from Disability Rights UK to one of Wednesday afternoon’s evidence panels (29 January). The second amendment proposes replacing the representative from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. Initially, the Chief Executive, John Kirkpatrick, was set to give evidence, but the new proposal is that the Chair, Baroness Falkner, should appear instead.

An amendment proposing to delay the start of line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill until 11 February has also been tabled by Kim Leadbeater. Her stated reason for this is to allow MPs on the Committee more time to review the substantial volume of written evidence; it will also help reduce the time pressure on Committee members to table their amendments arising from their consideration of this evidence. If approved, this amendment means that after this week’s oral evidence sessions — set to conclude on Thursday, 30 January — the Committee would not meet again until 11 February. This adjustment would cancel the originally planned meetings for Tuesday, 4 February, and Wednesday, 5 February.

The proposal may spark debate, as some Committee members may be keen to use the additional time to invite more witnesses for oral evidence. If the amendment is approved, the Committee would lose approximately eight hours of scrutiny time across the two cancelled days. However, this time could be recovered later in the process by adding extra sitting days to the schedule, depending on how quickly the Committee progresses through its scrutiny work. Keep an eye on whether this amendment faces opposition during today’s discussions.

Kim Leadbeater MP, the sponsor of the Bill, has announced she plans to propose a one-week delay to the detailed scrutiny of the Bill by the Public Bill Committee. In a letter to all MPs today, Leadbeater explained that she intends to ask the Committee to move the start date from Tuesday 4 February to Tuesday 11 February. This extra time is intended to allow members to fully review the substantial volume of written evidence already submitted, as well as the oral evidence they will hear this week from around 50 individuals and organisations.

The proposed delay may also stem from last week’s decision to schedule a third day of oral evidence this week, on Thursday, 30 January. This session has compressed the timetable, leaving members with a very narrow window to submit amendments later that day in order to meet the tabling deadline for the originally planned scrutiny proceedings on 4 February.

Under the Committee’s agreed Sittings Motion, meetings are scheduled for Tuesdays and Wednesdays when the House is sitting. If members approve Leadbeater’s proposal, they will therefore need to decide how to use the time allocated for the planned sittings on 4 and 5 February.

There is likely to be pressure - particularly from MPs with significant concerns about the Bill - to use the extra time to expand oral evidence sessions and invite additional witnesses to testify. If this happens, further amendments to the Sittings Motion will need to be made.

There are now 81 amendments and four new clauses listed on the latest amendment paper for the Bill. These amendments and new clauses have been proposed by eight MPs: Jessica Asato, Sarah Bool, Daisy Cooper, Meg Hillier, Sarah Olney, Naz Shah, Dr Ben Spencer and Chris Webb. Of these eight MPs:

• only two - Naz Shah and Sarah Olney - are on the Public Bill Committee that is to undertake detailed scrutiny of the Bill at this next stage; and

• only two - Daisy Cooper and Chris Webb - voted in support of the Bill at Second Reading last November.

The amendment which has thus far attracted most support from MPs - 14 have signed it to date - is amendment number 20 tabled by Jessica Asato, which would require medical practitioners acting as the co-ordinating doctor for an assisted death to have undertaken mandatory training in domestic abuse including into coercive control and financial abuse.

In response to last week’s controversy over the selection of witnesses for this week’s hearings, Kim Leadbeater MP has tabled an amendment to the Sittings Motion for the Public Bill Committee’s next meeting tomorrow. The proposed changes will add Professor Emyr Lewis, the Royal College of General Practitioners, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists to the list of witnesses scheduled to give evidence during the final hour of the Committee’s sitting on Thursday afternoon, 30 January.

The inclusion of a representative from the Royal College of Psychiatrists addresses a commitment made by Leadbeater following backlash against the Committee’s earlier decision not to invite the Royal College to give evidence. This reversal reflects concerns raised by critics who argued that their input was essential to the Bill's deliberations.

Professor Emyr Lewis replaces the previously anticipated witness from Senedd Cymru. During last week’s Committee meeting, Plaid Cymru leader Liz Saville Roberts emphasized the importance of hearing from a Welsh representative, given the Bill’s implications for Wales’ health and legal systems. However, it was acknowledged that arranging a suitable representative at short notice posed significant challenges.

Professor Lewis, the former head of the Department of Law and Criminology at the University of Aberystwyth and a former practicing solicitor, is a distinguished legal scholar with expertise in the Welsh devolution settlement and Welsh law.

The Hansard Society has published a briefing which highlights concerns about two of the Bill's clauses that grant delegated powers to Ministers. These clauses address:

• the power to specify approved substances for assisted dying; and

• the provision of assisted dying through the health service.

The briefing also examines the absence of a Delegated Powers Memorandum, which would normally explain the reasons for taking the powers, and its impact on effective scrutiny of the Bill.

You can read our Hansard Society briefing here.

The table below shows the full schedule of witnesses - individuals and organisations - who will give evidence to the Public Bill Committee next week.

The list includes 44 specified witnesses, including organisations and charities representing hospices and palliative care professionals; organisations representing the wider medical professions; practitioners of assisted dying in other jurisdictions such as Australia and the United States; legal experts, including judges, barristers, academics and solicitors; politicians from jurisdictions where assisted dying has been legalised; disability rights advocates; a psychiatrist; people and families with relevant experience; and a representative of the Senedd.

It is expected that the list will be amended to add the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

At the beginning of the debate on the money resolution, the Minister for Care, Stephen Kinnock MP, confirmed that the Government would assess the impact of the Bill and expects to publish a formal Impact Assessment before the Bill returns to the House for Report Stage. It is anticipated that the Bill's Report Stage will most likely be on 25 April 2025.

Kim Leadbeater MP has confirmed that the Royal College of Psychiatrists will be invited to give oral evidence to the Committee, despite a vote at yesterday's sitting which rejected their inclusion (X/Twitter: @kimleadbeater).

The addition will need to be agreed formally by the Committee, so Kim Leadbeater is likely to move an amendment to the agreed sittings motion at the beginning of the sitting on Tuesday 28 January.

The Public Bill Committee considering the Bill met this afternoon to agree a sittings motion, which sets out the dates and times that the Committee will meet and the witnesses that will give oral evidence to the Committee.

You can watch the debate on Parliamentlive.tv.

The Committee resolved that it shall first take oral evidence from approximately 42 witnesses on Tuesday 28 January, Wednesday 29 January and Thursday 30 January. We will post the witness list and timetable as an update on this page when it is made publicly available.

The Committee will consider the provisions of the Bill clause-by-clause, starting on Tuesday 4 February and Wednesday 5 February. The deadline for tabling amendments for the first of these days is Thursday 30 January.

The Committee will generally sit at 9:25am and then 2:00pm each day. On the sole Thursday sitting, dedicated to public evidence, the Committee will sit from 11:30am and 2:00pm.

The Committee will continue to meet on subsequent Tuesdays and Wednesdays when the House is sitting until it concludes consideration of the Bill.

Although this was not discussed at the meeting, the Committee will be looking to conclude its proceedings on or before Wednesday 16 April 2025 so that the Bill can have its Report stage at the earliest possible opportunity, on Friday 25 April (on the eighth PMB Friday sitting date, when the order of precedence dictates that Bills that have reached Report stage will be prioritised).

The meeting started with a motion from the sponsor of the Bill, Kim Leadbeater MP, that the Committee sit in private to consider matters relating to the sittings motion. Ms Leadbeater clarified that the Committee would sit in private only to discuss matters relating to the proposed witnesses, and that the Committee would have a chance to propose amendments and debate the motion afterwards. She suggested this was normal both for Public Bill Committees considering Government bills - where discussion of witnesses takes place largely between the Whips and in a programming sub-committee that sits in private - and for select committees. She also argued that it was desirable to consider the merits of individual witnesses, who would not be present to speak on their own behalf, in private. Danny Kruger MP argued that the Committee should reject Ms Leadbeater's motion and instead debate the list of witnesses in public. As well as the importance of the matter, he pointed out that Public Bill Committees for Private Members' Bills (PMBs) usually consider their sittings motions in public. Following an at times heated discussion, the question was put and the Committee resolved to sit in private.

Having discussed the proposed witness list in private for about an hour, the Committee returned to public session to debate the motion formally. In response to what appears to have been discussed in private, Kim Leadbeater moved an amendment to her own motion, to add an extra hour of oral evidence on Thursday 30 January to hear from a representative from the Welsh Senedd and from the charity Mencap. The Committee agreed this change.

Naz Shah MP then moved a series of amendments to add additional witnesses to the evidence list and, in some cases, to substitute them for those listed in Kim Leadbeater's motion. The debate then focused on the merits of these amendments to the witness list. The key points of difference focused on whether:

• a representative of the Royal College of Psychiatrists should be added, or whether the inclusion of the General Medical Council - which regulates psychiatrists - and British Medical Association was sufficient;

• an expert or practitioner from Canada should be added, or whether other countries offered better legislative parallels;

• the names proposed in the amendments were submitted to Kim Leadbeater in advance - Danny Kruger claimed that they had, Kim Leadbeater that they had not;

• three days of evidence was sufficient and whether more days could be provided at a later stage;

• the evidence list was appropriately balanced between supporters and opponents of assisted dying; and

• the purpose of oral evidence was to re-litigate the principle of assisted dying which had been agreed at the earlier Second Reading.

All the amendments proposed by Naz Shah were rejected by the Committee. One of the amendments - about the inclusion of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the evidence list - was pushed to a division. The result was eight votes in favour of including the Royal College and 14 votes against. A majority of the Committee's members were content that the inclusion of the British Medical Council and British Medical Association - who could nominate representatives from the psychiatric medical sector if they wished - was sufficient to address this area of policy concern for the moment. The sittings motion was then agreed without a division.

Interestingly, both Ministers on the Committee - Stephen Kinnock MP and Sarah Sackman MP - participated in the division (voting against the amendment), suggesting a more active role in the Committee's proceedings than the stated position of Government neutrality might imply.

In advance of the first sitting of the Public Bill Committee at 2pm this afternoon, an updated amendment paper has been published. There are now 47 amendments and 1 proposed new clause for consideration by the Committee, with more to follow. The first few motions on the paper, however, deal not with the text of the Bill but with the way the Public Bill Committee will operate - how often and when it will sit, who it will invite to give oral evidence and when, and arrangements for publication of the written evidence that is received.

The Bill's sponsor, Kim Leadbeater MP, has tabled a motion "That the Committee do sit in private to consider matters relating to the sittings motion." However, the details of the proposed sittings motion - when the Committee will sit etc - has not been published so we don't yet know her preferred timetable and witness list. Why has it not been published? Because the motion does not have to be tabled in advance - in can be done "without notice" - so will be tabled at the meeting. However, it will have been the subject of private discussion between the members of the Committee, so they will know what Kim Leadbeater intends to propose. It is reported that Leadbeater is concerned that if MPs discuss the relative merits of particular witnesses, and why one should be chosen instead of another, this should not be done in public when the individuals concerned will not be present and will have no opportunity to respond to anything that is said about them.

It is important to stress that this does not mean the future evidence sessions will be in private - those will all be held in public, broadcast live and transcribed for Hansard. What is proposed is that part of today's discussion about when to sit and who to hear from will be in private (see below for a more detailed explanation of this point).

However, MPs who are concerned about the Bill, led by Danny Kruger MP, have tabled their own motion detailing their preferred timetable and list of witnesses. Of the 10 other MPs in addition to Danny Kruger who have signed the amendment, only one, Naz Shah, is actually a member of the Public Bill Committee.

They want the Committee:

• to meet every Tuesday and Thursday, with sessions in both the morning and afternoon each day

• to hear from witnesses over four days - on Tuesday 28 January, Thursday 30 January, Tuesday 4 February and Thursday 6 February; and

• to hear from 42 named witnesses across those four days, including representatives from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA, as well as UK based barristers, disability campaigners, ethicists, hospices, human rights bodies, judges, and palliative care specialists.

Why have these MPs tabled their own motion? It could be that there are genuine differences between members on the Committee about the sittings and the witness list and this is designed to flush out the differences in public. Equally, there could be other reasons; it could be that the proposal has not garnered broader support within the Committee - only two members of the Committee have signed the motion - and so publishing it with the supporting names of senior backbenchers like Dame Meg Hillier and Sir Julian Smith is designed to give their position greater weight and generate political and public pressure on the Committee. In short, understanding the 'politics' of this process is critical, but it may not always be clear exactly why proponents or opponents of the bill are signalling something publicly.

There is no exact comparison to draw on because a Public Bill Committee for a Private Members' Bill has never taken public evidence before.

• Private Members' Bills: the sittings motion is usually dealt with in public, but then it is usually not a matter of much debate among the members. Public Bill Committees for most PMBs sit only once and do not take evidence so there is rarely anything to discuss.

• Government Bills: a programming sub-committee of the Public Bill Committee is established to agree sitting times and witness lists and this sits in private and no record of its deliberations is made. In practice, the party Whips will already have reached agreement on the arrangements beforehand. Generally the Whips allocate the witness time available to the Government and Opposition and it is left to each side to decide their own witness list, albeit with some negotiation at the margins. The sub-committee will generally formalise what has been agreed, although amendments can be proposed if the sub-committee members disagree with a particular aspect of what the Whips have proposed. If further changes to the sitting arrangements and witness lists are required the sub-committee can meet again during the course of the PBCs work at the discretion of the Chair. At the first sitting of the PBC, the programme motion agreed by the programming sub-committee is put to the members for agreement. In practice, the MPs can debate it at this stage but given that it has already been agreed between the party Whips, this is a rare occurrence. Once the Committee resolves to accept the programme motion, it will then move to briefly sit in private to discuss its work in advance of hearing from the first witnesses.

• A Private Member's Bill that is adopted by the Government: Occasionally a PMB will fail to make it to the statue book but the Government will agree to take it up as part of its legislative programme. This was the case in the 2017-19 Session with the Voyeurism (Offences) Bill which began as a PMB sponsored by Wera Hobhouse MP to ban 'upskirting', but which was adopted by the Government after another MP blocked its progress at Second Reading. Unusually the Government's version of the Bill had its Second Reading in Committee rather than in the Chamber and therefore, also unusually, no programme motion was moved immediately after, as happens when Government bills are considered on the floor of the House. This meant the Public Bill Committee - like this assisted dying bill - did not have a programming sub-committee. In this instance, the sittings motion and oral evidence list were agreed in public, but without debate or division, at the start of the first sitting. The PBC then resolved to sit in private for several minutes prior to questioning the witnesses.

At the Committee stage of Bills, there are therefore elements of public and private discussion; some of it is a matter of negotiation, and some of it is the product of a deal negotiated by the Whips through what is known as the 'Usual Channels' . Much of it is orchestrated behind the scenes so that differences and divisions do not spill over into public view in the Committee. The public aspect of the consideration of sittings and witness lists usually rubberstamps what has been privately agreed. There appears to be no precedent for discussing, in public view, an extensive list of witnesses about which there may not be a consensus.

Nonetheless, given the public interest in this Bill, it would be preferable and politically advisable to maximise transparency, whilst acknowledging that there must be room for private discussions between members at the start of each Committee session, not least about practical matters such as deciding the direction and ordering of questioning of witnesses or the conveying and discussion of procedural or legal advice.

The text of the money motion, which is set to be debated by MPs on Wednesday 22 January, has appeared on the Commons future business paper for that day. As explained in updates last November and earlier this month, this motion is needed to authorise the financial consequences of the Bill.

The text reads:

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of:

(1) any expenditure incurred under or by virtue of the Act by the Secretary of State, and

(2) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under or by virtue of any other Act out of money so provided.

This is standard text for a money resolution, as set out in Appendix B of the guidance on financial resolutions published by the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel (OPC). For similar recent examples, see the money resolutions agreed at the end of the Second Reading debates for the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, Armed Forces Commissioner Bill, and Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill during this Session alone.

MPs can propose amendments to the motion, but Erskine May clarifies that because of the convention that only the Government can propose new spending, amendments:

"may reduce in scope but may not extend in respect of the amount of the expenditure, the area of its operation or the objects to which, or conditions under which, it is to be applied."

A recent example of an attempt to amend a money resolution can be found during the passage of the Overseas Electors Bill 2017-19, which proposed extending the number of British citizens outside the UK entitled to vote in parliamentary elections. This was also a Private Member's Bill but one that secured Government support and which similarly required a money resolution to authorise expenditure to cover the financial consequences of the legislation. The Government moved a motion which, like that for the assisted dying bill, authorised "any increase" of expenditure attributable to the Bill. An amendment was tabled in the name of the Leader of the Opposition to replace the text with a motion limiting the authorised spending to "an increase not exceeding £10,000 in any financial year prior to the financial year after the financial year in which a Minister of the Crown lays before the House of Commons a report on the expected increases arising from the Act and any increase thereafter”. This would have limited Government spending on implementing the Bill to £10,000 per year until the Government laid a report before Parliament assessing the expected costs of the policy. The Government called the amendment a "wrecking amendment" that would "starve the Bill of the money that it needs to do its job" and noted that an Impact Assessment had already been published alongside the Bill.

If an amendment is tabled to the money resolution for the assisted dying bill, it is uncertain whether the Speaker would select it for consideration. Typically, the Speaker prioritises amendments proposed by the Leader of the Opposition, as was the case with the Overseas Electors Bill. However, the assisted dying bill is being approached differently, with both frontbenches treating it neutrally and allowing a free vote on this matter of personal conscience. In deciding whether to select an amendment, the Speaker would need to weigh factors such as the number of signatories backing the amendment, the degree to which they reflect the MPs who voted 'No' at the Bill's Second Reading last November, and the breadth of cross-party support for the amendment.

The Public Bill Committee set up to consider the Bill is scheduled to meet for the first time on Tuesday 21 January to consider the ‘sittings motion’. This motion is likely to set out:

• the dates and times when the Committee will meet;

• at which meetings the Committee will hear oral evidence; and

• from whom the Committee will take oral evidence.

For Government bills, such a motion is normally agreed in private by a ‘programming sub-committee’, made up of a selection of members from the Public Bill Committee. The motion will usually have been agreed in advance between the Government and Opposition Whips.

However, programming sub-committees only meet when a bill is subject to a ‘programme order’, which Private Members’ Bills like the ‘Assisted Dying Bill’ are not. Erskine May clarifies that “[in] the case of bills which are not subject to a programme order, where it seems likely that the consideration of a bill will not be concluded at a single sitting, it is usual for the committee, before entering on the consideration of the bill, to determine, by resolution, on what days in each week it will sit and at what hour it will meet for the purpose of considering the bill.” This may be altered at later sittings of the Committee. The Committee might also amend the order in which the Bill is to be considered through an ‘order of consideration motion’. Such a motion can be moved at any stage. The meeting is currently listed as public on Parliament’s What’s On page, though meetings of programming sub-committees usually take place in private.

In the last few days, six further amendments have been tabled by Liberal Democrat MP Daisy Cooper, who voted Aye at Second Reading.

• Amendments 2 and 3: These amendments would require the Secretary of State to make regulations specifying the training, qualifications and experience that the (the 'coordinating doctor') must have, and upgrading the procedure for those regulations to the affirmative scrutiny procedure. At present, the Secretary of State has a discretionary power to make such regulations, subject to the negative scrutiny procedure.

• Amendments 4 and 5: These amendments would require the Secretary of State to make regulations specifying the training, qualifications and experience that the (the 'independent doctor') must have, and upgrading the procedure for those regulations to the affirmative scrutiny procedure. At present, the Secretary of State has a discretionary power to make such regulations, subject to the negative scrutiny procedure.

• Amendment 6: This amendment would require the assessing doctor to refer a person being assessed for a mental capacity assessment by a psychiatrist if the assessing doctor has doubts as to the person's capacity. At present, the Bill provides only that the doctor "may" refer the person if they have doubts about the person's capacity.

• Amendment 7: This amendment would require the Registrar General for England and Wales to at least once a year, prepare and lay before Parliament a statistical analysis of the number of people who had been assessed by a medical practitioner as not eligible for assisted dying. At present, the Bill only requires a statistical analysis of assisted deaths provided in accordance with the Act.

The Leader of the House of Commons, Lucy Powell MP, announced at today's Business Questions that the Government will table the money motion for the Bill on Wednesday 22 January. If agreed, the motion will become a resolution of the House.

Standing Orders require that any new expenditure resulting from a bill must be authorised by a resolution of the House ('money resolution'). In order for the Public Bill Committee to consider any clauses in the Bill that have spending implications, a money resolution must therefore be agreed in advance. (See the news update for 12 November 2024 which explains the procedural background to this issue and what clauses in the Bill have financial implications.)

The Leader of the House stressed today that the Government's tabling of the resolution did not mean it was agreeing to fund the measures:

"In order for a Bill Committee to consider any clauses that could have spending implications, the Government must first table a money resolution. That is not the Government agreeing to fund the measures in a Bill; it is purely to enable the Bill to be debated in Committee. In the case of this Bill, this relates to one small component that is yet to be debated and agreed. Without the motion being agreed to, that debate could not happen and that component could not remain in the Bill. The Government have taken the view that that would act against our commitment to remain neutral on the Bill. The House should debate and decide on these matters for itself. I hope that, as with Second Reading, colleagues will focus on the substance and not the processes of this sensitive private Member’s Bill."

In practice, however, by tabling the money resolution the Government is accepting the principle that if the Bill makes it to the statute book it will make provision for all the costs that follow.

The motion can be debated by MPs for up to 45 minutes. Erskine May clarifies that the debate "must be confined to the terms of the resolution itself and must not be extended to the related bill". However, the debate will give MPs an opportunity to ask the Minister about the expected financial impact of the Bill's provisions on both the NHS and the justice system, whether a formal Impact Assessment has been conducted, and whether that Impact Assessment will be published and if so when. It is not clear which Minister will appear at the despatch box on behalf of the Government, though it is typically a Minister from the responsible Department, so in this case it is likely to be either a Health or Justice Minister.

The Liberal Democrat MP, Paul Kohler, led a debate today on the state of hospice and palliative care following an application to the Backbench Business Committee for time in the House of Commons Chamber to discuss an issue that was an important theme in the Second Reading debate on the bill in November 2024.

As Paul Kohler noted in opening the debate:

"When this House debated the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill last November, the crisis in hospice funding and concerns over the provision of palliative care were a constant refrain in the subtext of many of the speeches from supporters and opponents of the Bill. As someone who entered the Chamber that morning undecided as to how I would vote, I became increasingly convinced throughout the five hours of powerful argument and testimony that no matter what the House decided, the time had come to address hospice funding for the provision of palliative care head on, for death is as much a part of life as living." House of Commons, Hansard, 13 January 2025, Col. 85

You can read the Hansard transcript or watch a recording of the debate (from 19:00:07).

The Speaker has chosen five senior backbenchers - Peter Dowd, Clive Efford, Sir Roger Gale, Carolyn Harris and Esther McVey - to chair sittings of the forthcoming Public Bill Committee (PBC):

• two of the MPs - Peter Dowd and Clive Efford - supported the Bill at Second Reading;

• two of the MPs - Sir Roger Gale and Esther McVey - opposed the Bill at Second Reading;

• one of the MPs - Carolyn Harris - did not vote on the Bill at Second Reading.

The chairs of PBCs are expected to uphold neutrality in their role, akin to the impartiality required of the Speaker and Deputy Speakers. By convention, chairs of PBCs do not take part in any future deliberations and votes on the bill after the Committee stage ends, which in practice means they should not take part in the debates or vote at Report and Third Reading.

Typically only one MP is appointed to chair the Public Bill Committee stage of Private Members' Bills as these are usually short, relatively uncontroversial bills and most will require only one PBC sitting. It is not unusual for multiple MPs - usually two or four - to be appointed to chair PBCs for Government bills, particularly if it is a long and complex bill that will require more than one sitting per week over a period of many weeks.

It is rare but not unprecedented to appoint five MPs to chair a PBC. For example, in the 2018-19 Session the Speaker appointed six chairs to preside over Committee sittings for the Government's Fisheries Bill: two chairs were initially appointed in November 2018, then a further two in early December 2018 and another two later that month. However, in practice, only four of the six MPs were ever needed to chair a Committee sitting. In 1999-2000, six MPs were appointed to chair the Standing Committee (as legislative committees were known before they were reformed and renamed Public Bill Committees) for the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Bill. But again, in practice, only five of the MPs ever took the chair in the Committee (h/t @Ringwiss).

The Labour MP for Ashford, Sojan Joseph, who will serve on the assisted dying bill's Public Bill Committee, has tabled the first amendment. His proposed change would require that the independent doctor referred to in relation to clause 8 of the Bill is a registered psychiatrist.

The Public Bill Committee has issued a call for written evidence from anyone who has "relevant expertise" in relation to the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. The Committee notes that:

"The sooner you send in your submission, the more time the Committee will have to take it into account during its consideration of the existing clauses of the Bill and of any amendments tabled to the Bill."

The Committee advises that submissions should "address matters contained within the Bill and concentrate on issues where you have expertise and on factual information of which you would like the Committee to be aware. Your submission could most usefully:

• highlight or discuss views on or concerns with the existing provisions of the Bill;

• suggest amendments to the Bill, with supporting explanation; and

• (when amendments are published) support or oppose amendments tabled to the Bill by MPs with supporting explanation."

Guidance on the format and length of the submission, what will happen to it when you have submitted it, as well as where to send it is all set out in the Committee's call for evidence. Do not send evidence direct to Kim Leadbeater MP herself - that will not be treated as evidence to the Committee.

The Shadow Attorney General, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar KC, wrote on 29 November 2024 to the Attorney General, Lord Hermer KC, about the work required of the Government in relation to the Bill prior to Second Reading, as set out in the Cabinet Office Guide to Making Legislation, and particularly questions about the Bill's compatibility with provisions in the ECHR.

Lord Hermer responded on 12 December 2024, stating that:

"in light of the nature of this Bill, both the Government and the Opposition have chosen to remain neutral. The Prime Minister set aside collective responsibility. As a result, the provisions of the Guide to Making Legislation, which concern the collective agreement process, do not apply to the Bill."

The exchange of correspondence can be accessed via Lord Wolfson's social media post on 13 December 2024.

Others, including the Hansard Society, have concerns about this interpretation of the Guide to Making Legislation and the adoption of a position of neutrality in relation to Private Members' Bills. (See for example the entry for 18/11/24 below.) The Guide states explicitly that if the Government is to remain neutral on a PMB it needs "collective agreement from the PBL Committee and the appropriate policy committee." It also states that "A neutral stance must therefore be collectively agreed by ministers in the same way as supporting a private member’s bill, with a handling letter and accompanying documentation: a PBL Committee memorandum, bill print and explanatory notes (where possible), impact assessment, legal issues memorandum and delegated powers memorandum."

Lord Hermer also cited Erskine May in relation to the Law Officers convention, namely that:

"By long-standing convention, observed by successive Governments, the fact of, and substance of advice from, the law officers of the Crown is not disclosed outside government. This convention is referred to in paragraph [5.14] of the Ministerial Code. The purpose of this convention is to enable the Government to obtain frank and full legal advice in confidence. I am therefore unable to substantively respond to the points which you raise."

The House of Commons has appointed 23 MPs to serve on the Public Bill Committee for the assisted dying bill, following formal nomination by the Committee of Selection and on the recommendation of the Bill's sponsor, Kim Leadbeater MP. The size of the Committee exceeds the usual range: recent practice has been for between 16 and 20 MPs to serve on PBCs.

• Two ministers will sit on the Committee (Health Minister Stephen Kinnock and Justice Minister Sarah Sackman). Both supported the Bill at Second Reading.

• The other 21 members, including Kim Leadbeater MP, are not Ministers.

• The party composition of the committee is:

  • 15 Labour (65.2% [of the committee] vs. 63.2% [of all MPs])

  • 4 Conservatives (17.4% vs. 18.6%)

  • 3 Liberal Democrats (13.0% vs. 11.1%)

  • 1 Plaid Cymru (4.3% vs. 0.6%)

• Fourteen members (60.9%) of the Committee voted for the Bill at Second Reading (including the two ministers). This is a higher share proportionately than the number of all MPs who voted for the Bill at Second Reading (54.5%).

• Five of the 14 MPs who voted to give the Bill a Second Reading are sponsors or co-sponsors of the Bill; another was a teller for the 'Ayes'.

• Nine out of the 23 members gave a speech at Second Reading. Eight of the 14 MPs on the Committee who supported the Bill spoke at Second Reading; only one (Danny Kruger) of the 9 MPs on the Committee who voted against the Bill spoke in the Second Reading debate.

• Thirteen of the 23 PBC members were first elected in 2024. This is 56.5% of the Committee, slightly more than the 51.5% of the House as a whole.

It is not clear what role the two Ministers will take in the proceedings of the Committee. They may choose to only participate in debates and votes about which the Government has a collective position - specifically, concerns about the drafting and 'workability' of the Bill - while remaining neutral otherwise. Ministers would therefore participate in the proceedings in only two circumstances: (i) to support amendments designed to make the Bill technically and legally operable; and (ii) to oppose amendments that would not render the Bill either technically or legally inoperable. This would mean that on amendments where the Government is neutral, the balance on the Committee would more closely reflect the balance at Second Reading.

MPs formally debated the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill for the first time today in the House of Commons Chamber.

MPs voted by 330 to 275 votes to give the Bill a Second Reading, enabling it to proceed to the next scrutiny stage (Public Bill Committee).

At the start of the proceedings the Speaker made a short statement outlining how he planned to manage the day's business. He explained that 160 MPs had indicated that they wished to speak. Consequently, while it is not customary to impose a speech limit during debates on Private Members’ Bills, he asked MPs to restrict themselves to about eight minutes once the first two speeches in support of and opposition to the Bill were complete. He also said that the reasoned amendment in the name of Dr Ben Spencer had not been selected. This decision is at the discretion of the Speaker and conventionally he does not explain why he has not selected an amendment.

At the conclusion of the debate the Parliamentary-Under-Secretary of State for Justice, Alex Davies-Jones MP, responded on behalf of the Government. She spoke as the Minister responsible for criminal law in relation to assisted dying or assisted suicide in England and Wales as set out in the Suicide Act 1961. She declined to express a personal view out of respect for the principle of a free vote and for her colleagues in Government who did not have an opportunity to express their views in the House. She said:

"The Government are of the view that any change to the law in this area is an issue of conscience for individual parliamentarians. It is rightly, in our view, a matter for Parliament rather than the Government to decide. Accordingly, the Government Benches will have a free vote should the views of the House be tested today. If the will of Parliament is that the law in this area should change, the Government will of course respect their duty to the statute book and ensure that any Bill is effective and its provisions can be enforced."

Labour's Uma Kumaran has withdrawn her name from the list of MPs supporting the reasoned amendment that sets out why Members should vote against giving the Bill a Second Reading. However, according to the Order Paper for tomorrow's debate, four new MPs have added their names in support of the amendment: Graham Stuart (Conservative), Jack Abbott (Labour), David Reed (Conservative), and Dr Andrew Murrison (Conservative).

Unlike committees for Government bills, Public Bill Committees (PBCs) for Private Members' Bills have no power to accept oral or written evidence submissions. This would require a resolution of the House of Commons. Kim Leadbeater MP has therefore tabled a motion - which has been published on the Order Paper for tomorrow - to enable the PBC to take evidence. In procedural terms this is expressed as giving the Committee "the power to send for persons, papers and records". If the Bill secures enough support to proceed beyond Second Reading the motion will be moved by Kim Leadbeater, immediately after confirmation of the result of the Second Reading vote.

Amendments cannot be proposed to the text of a Bill itself at Second Reading. However, opponents may table a 'reasoned amendment' explaining the reasons why they are voting against the Bill. Procedurally this is achieved by amending the Second Reading motion “that the Bill be now read a second time”. Such amendments usually take the form “That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the [Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill] because…”, followed by the reasons for opposing the Bill.

Seven MPs from the three largest parties - Dr Ben Spencer (Conservative), Anna Dixon (Labour), Munira Wilson (LibDem), Polly Billington (Labour), Josh Fenton-Glynn (Labour), Uma Kumaran (Labour), and John Lamont (Conservative) - have now signed a reasoned amendment to the Bill, setting out the reasons why they plan to vote against it:

"That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill because the House’s procedures for the consideration of Private Members’ Bills do not allow for sufficient debate on and scrutiny of a Bill on a matter of this importance; recognises the importance of having a fully-informed debate and vote on assisted dying, which should be subsequent to an independent review of and public consultation on the existing law and proposals for change; and considers that the review and consultation should be informed by an independent assessment of the provision of palliative care for adults who are terminally ill."

Reasoned amendments must relate to the Bill itself but must not be concerned with detailed provisions that could be resolved through amendments at a later stage. As with other amendments, it is for the Chair to decide whether to select a reasoned amendment. Just because one has been tabled does not mean it will be selected. Erskine May states that only one reasoned amendment can be moved at Second Reading and the Chair must therefore decide which one, if any, will be selected for debate if multiple such amendments are proposed.

The Chair will announce at the start of proceedings on the Second Reading debate on the Bill on Friday 29 November whether a reasoned amendment has been selected. Having clarified the selection (or lack thereof), the Chair will then call on the proposer of the Bill, Kim Leadbeater MP, to move the motion “that the Bill be now read a second time”. She will then give her speech. When she concludes her remarks, the Chair will stand and propose the main question: “the Question is that the Bill be now read a second time”. If the Chair selects this reasoned amendment (or another such amendment should one be tabled) it is likely (though not required) that the Chair will call on one of the Members supporting the reasoned amendment. That Member will say something to the effect that "I beg to move the amendment standing in my name on the Order Paper" and will then make a speech in favour of the amendment (setting out their reasons for opposing the bill).

At the end of that Member's speech, the Chair will once again stand and say something to the effect that: “The original question was that the Bill be now read a second time. An amendment having been moved, the Question now is that the amendment be made.”

The debate that follows will then formally proceed on that question (“that the amendment be made”) rather than the question in Kim Leadbeater’s motion (“that the Bill be now read a second time”.) In practice, this is unlikely to have much effect on the actual contributions MPs make during the debate. At the end, however, MPs voting “Aye” on this question will be those opposed to the Bill, and those voting “No” will be supporting the Bill. If the House agrees to the reasoned amendment, then the Bill is defeated, and no further votes take place.

If the House rejects the reasoned amendment, the House proceeds “forthwith” (immediately and without further debate) to a vote on the main question (Kim Leadbeater’s motion “that the Bill be now read a second time”). If it garners majority support, the Bill will proceed to Committee stage.

In a post for the Constitution Unit at University College London, Daniel Gover responds to growing concerns that there will be insufficient scrutiny of the Bill if it passed its Second Reading. He proposes four measures that Parliament could adopt to address the concerns, namely:

• adopt an informal speech limit for Members in the Second Reading debate or endorse formal speech limits to avoid any lack of clarity;

• give the Public Bill Committee the power to take public evidence;

• provide extra time for debate (more than the usual single day) at Report Stage in the House of Commons; and

• guarantee time for consideration of any amendments made to the Bill in the House of Lords, so that the Bill does not fall for a lack of time.

A detailed briefing on the Bill has been published by the House of Commons Library. The Library produces briefings on bills before Second Reading and after Committee Stage (so in advance of the Report Stage debate in the Chamber). Its briefings are politically impartial, provide a wealth of factual information, and set out the range of opinions that surround a Bill. MPs are the primary audience for the briefings but they are also very useful for anyone outside Parliament. The briefing provides an overview of the current legal position, the debates about the appropriateness of the Private Member's Bill process and the position of key campaigners and stakeholders, as well as an analysis of the key clauses in the Bill.

In a post on The Conversation, Daniel Gover explores criticism of the assisted dying bill relating not to policy but to the procedure by which it has been introduced. As a Private Member's Bill, it is not subject to the same policy and parliamentary processes as a Government bill.

Daniel Gover is a Senior Lecturer in British Politics at Queen Mary University of London. His research interests include the legislative process and Private Members' Bills.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Daniel Greenberg, is investigating the recent former chair (2021-24) of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Dying Well, Danny Kruger MP, for an alleged breach of the rules for APPGs in relation to "the registration of an interest". The Commissioner is also looking at allegations relating to the "Production and publication of an income and expenditure statement by the APPG on Dying Well". No further information is available and it is not known when the inquiry is likely to conclude.

The longest-serving members of the House of Commons - Labour MP Diane Abbott and Conservative MP Edward Leigh - have written a joint article in The Guardian, setting out their concerns about both the process of the Bill and what they think is likely to happen in practice once the Bill is implemented.

On the use of the Private Members' Bill process, they say:

"Regarding the process, we have seen our fair share of bills over the years: some good, some bad. Whatever the merits of a bill, laws are always better if there is proper scrutiny and plenty of expert advice has been sought. This is particularly the case with private members’ bills, which often do not enjoy the independent scrutiny that government lawyers can offer."

They note that the current House of Commons is particularly inexperienced at dealing with legislation given the high churn in membership brought about by the recent general election.

"Parliament will have sat for just 12 weeks by the time MPs vote on what is, quite literally, a matter of life and death; many MPs are still relatively unfamiliar with normal parliamentary procedure, let alone for private members’ bills, of which this will be the first in this parliament. There is more than a suspicion that the pressure groups behind this proposed change have sought to take advantage of an inexperienced new parliament. Either way, the flawed process has been lamentable and wholly unacceptable for a matter of such importance."

The Guardian is reporting that the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was drafted for Kim Leadbeater by Dame Elizabeth Gardiner, who recently retired after almost a decade as First Parliamentary Counsel, the Government’s most senior legislative drafter. Drafting a Private Member’s Bill on instruction from the MP sponsoring the Bill will be a different exercise to drafting a Government Bill on instruction from departmental lawyers attached to the Government Legal Department. And drafting a bill in semi-retired private practice may also be more challenging without access to the wealth of drafting resources available in the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel. Nonetheless, that such an experienced and senior legislative drafter has crafted the Bill should assuage concerns about its legal and technical qualities.

In a post for the Institute for Government, Hannah White and Jill Rutter argue that having promised Esther Rantzen that he would allow Parliament to vote on assisted dying, Sir Keir Starmer may have inadvertently set back her cause by approaching the issue through a Private Members' Bill. The post notes that the legislation would have benefited from greater consideration at the preparation stage, and that the Government has not laid the groundwork to enable MPs and the public to make an informed decision about assisted dying. They highlight how a policy review could have explored international experience and looked at the practicalities of implementation, including the implications for the NHS and safeguards to address concerns about coercion.

In a post on his Public Law for Everyone blog, Professor Mark Elliott, exploring the constitutional and procedural implications of the Bill and the Government's adoption of a 'neutral' position, concludes that:

“At present, the formal status of the Government’s avowedly neutral position is unclear, not least thanks to the unwillingness of Ministers to adhere to the dubious diktat issued by the Cabinet Secretary following the suspension of collective responsibility. Similar uncertainty arises in relation to the extent to which the Government is prepared to fulfil the constitutional expectations that arise in the event of such neutrality. It is to be hoped, therefore, that the Government will rapidly clarify whether the Cabinet Secretary’s position stands, whether it remains the case that Ministers are required, in effect, to be silent, and, if so, how that squares with the Government’s own expectations, set out in its Guide to Making Legislation, that it will facilitate informed consideration of the Bill by publishing, among other things, an impact assessment. Whatever one’s views on the merits of the assisted dying Bill, a matter of such importance deserves to be dealt with in a manner that is procedurally and constitutionally beyond reproach; legislation as consequential as this surely demands nothing less.”

Professor Elliott is Professor of Public Law at Cambridge University and a former Legal Adviser to the House of Lords Constitution Committee. His blogpost cites the Hansard Society's research a number of times.

At Business Questions today the Leader of the House of Commons, Lucy Powell MP, set out the Government's position in relation to the Bill and addressed the question of how much time would be available to MPs to scrutinise it. She said:

“I know that people care deeply about this issue, and there are strongly held views on both sides. As such, it is a matter for Members to consider personally and freely. I know from the last debate on this issue held in the House that it can be the best of moments for Parliament, with considered, thoughtful and respectful debate. It is not a Government Bill. Similar issues such as legalising abortion and homosexuality have come about via private Member’s Bills in the past, and I believe that is the appropriate way to consider matters of conscience, with a free vote and a neutral Government position. As the Bill will be the first item of business on 29 November, it is highly likely that the debate on Second Reading will last for the full five hours. That is comparable to proceedings on any other Bill—perhaps longer—and I am sure the House would want that to be the case. Should the House agree to its Second Reading, the Bill would then be considered in Committee, probably for several weeks. The whole House will also have further opportunities to debate and vote on those matters on Report and again on Third Reading, which will not be until April at the earliest. The Government have a duty to ensure that any Bill that passes through Parliament is effective and can be enforced. That is why if any Bill is to be supported by the House, we would expect to work with the promoting Member to ensure that it is workable. This is a matter for the House to decide, and the Government will implement the will of the House, whatever it so chooses. I hope that will help Members when considering these issues.”

At Prime Minister’s Questions this afternoon, Conservative MP Sir Alec Shelbrooke asked the Prime Minister to commit, “to two days - 16 hours - of protected Government time for the Bill on the Floor of the House, so that we can examine and debate the Bill on Report, which is when much of what we are concerned about can be brought up? Otherwise, people like me may decline it a Second Reading, through fear that we may not be able to debate the issues in full.”

The Prime Minister's response did not address the issue of providing more time to debate the Bill. He said:

“I know that there are strongly held views on both sides of the debate across the House. That is why there will be a free vote. Every Member needs to decide for themselves how they will vote. I do think that there is sufficient time allocated to it, but it is an important issue.”

If a Bill receives a Second Reading, a money resolution is needed to provide parliamentary approval for the financial consequences of the legislation. It authorises public spending or charges on the public purse that have not been previously approved by an existing Act of Parliament. Without this resolution, clauses in the Bill that create financial obligations cannot proceed.

Clauses in a bill which create such obligations (charges on public expenditure) are italicised. As Erskine May explains, this marks the fact that “they do not unconditionally form part of the Bill”. A Public Bill Committee cannot consider those parts of the Bill – the italicised words, and the clauses governed by them – if they have not been authorised by a money resolution. In the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, clause 32 is italicised concerning the Secretary of State’s powers to ensure assistance is available as part of the health service in England and Wales. On the Future Business paper for 29 November, a note has therefore been added to the entry for the Bill confirming that:

“A money resolution is required for this Bill to be proceeded with in Committee.”

Only a Government Minister - not Kim Leadbeater, the MP sponsoring the Bill - can table the money motion (which becomes a resolution when agreed to by the House). This restriction arises from the ‘financial initiative of the Crown’, a constitutional principle dating back to 1713. It gives the Crown – the Government of the day – exclusive authority to request or recommend expenditure to the House of Commons. To table a money motion, the Government must therefore assess how much money will be required and have some idea about where the funding will come from, although it is not required to set this out in the motion itself. The progress of the Bill will therefore depend on the Government’s willingness to facilitate a money resolution if the Bill receives a Second Reading. A money motion is usually moved in the week following the Second Reading and the motion is debatable for up to 45 minutes.

Kim Leadbeater MP has published her Private Members' Bill to legalise assisted dying. At 32 pages the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is unusually long for a Private Members Bill. It comprises 43 clauses and six schedules of legislative text. Explanatory Notes have also been published alongside the Bill to assist readers in understanding what each clause of the Bill will mean in practice, as well as providing historical context to the policy background and information about how the Bill will affect other legislation in related policy areas. MPs will decide whether to give the Bill a Second Reading on Friday 29 November 2024.

In a blogpost for the Constitution Unit, former Clerk of the House Sir David Natzler argues that the Government must ensure that the Bill is not lost purely because of a lack of parliamentary time rather than an assessment of its merits. He suggests there are four things the Government ought to do in advance of Second Reading:

• co-operate with other parties to ensure there is a vote at Second Reading and the Bill is not talked out;

• clarify whether the Government intends to run a public consultation or set up a review if Second Reading is agreed;

• offer and openly acknowledge the assistance of Parliamentary Counsel in reviewing the text of the Bill; and

• make clear that the Government will bring forward a motion to allow for the submission of written evidence to the Public Bill Committee.

In the entry for the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on the House of Commons 'Future Business' paper there is now a note referring MPs and other readers to the Health and Social Care Committee's report titled 'Assisted Dying/Assisted Suicide' (published on 29 February 2024) and the Government's response (published on 9 May 2024).

The inquiry was undertaken in the previous 2023-24 Session "to serve as a basis for discussion and debate in future Parliaments." The Committee did not propose how the debate about assisted dying should be resolved, but brought together "a comprehensive and up-to-date body of evidence relating to this difficult, sensitive, and yet, crucial subject" that could be "a significant and useful resource for future Parliamentarians." The Committee states that it received over 68,000 responses to its online form, and over 380 pieces of written evidence. The report covers:

• the current legislative position and the state of public opinion on the issue of assisted dying;

• trends and research from those jurisdictions where assisted dying/assisted suicide is legal;

• the experience of healthcare professionals, including in those jurisdictions where assisted dying/suicide is legal;

• the care provided to people managing long-term, sometimes terminal conditions and the role that palliative and end-of-life care plays.

The 20 MPs who were successful in this year’s Private Members’ Bill (PMB) ballot presented their Bills for First Reading in the House of Commons today. After presenting their bill, the MPs picked a Friday sitting date for its Second Reading. PMBs presented for First Reading must have a short title (the name) and a long title (a ore formal description of what the bill covers and seeks to do). Political slogans are not permitted in short or long titles and only well-known abbreviations are allowed (such as 'NHS'). If the bill encompasses a number of minor matters then the phrase 'and for connected purposes' is permitted in the long title. A full legislative text of a PMB is only required if the bill secures a Second Reading. The provisions set out in the text must stay within the scope of the short and long titles. A list of up to 11 supporters (who must not be ministers) can be supplied. A supporters' list is not necessary but can be a good indicator of cross-party interest and can usefully highlight the support of prominent and influential MPs.

Kim Leadbeater MP, who came top of the ballot, had already indicated that she intended to bring forward a Bill to legalise assisted dying. When presenting the Bill she confirmed that its title will be the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. Having come top of the PMB ballot she had first choice of the 13 sitting Friday dates for the Second Reading of her bill and as expected she chose the first PMB sitting Friday - 29 November 2024 - for its Second Reading debate.

The following MPs are listed as supporters of the Bill: Kit Malthouse (Cons), Christine Jardine (Lib Dem), Jake Richards (Labour), Siân Berry (Green), Rachel Hopkins (Labour), Peter Bedford (Cons), Tonia Antoniazzi (Labour), Sarah Green (Lib Dem), Dr Jeevun Sandher (Labour), Ruth Cadbury (Labour) and Paula Barker (Labour).

In each parliamentary Session, Private Members’ Bills are given precedence over government business in the House of Commons on 13 Fridays. The Government proposes the dates in a motion that must be approved by the House each Session. The dates for this Session have been approved today.

The first seven of these Fridays are allocated for Second Reading debates, while the remaining six give priority to subsequent stages after Committee (Report, Third Reading, and consideration of Lords amendments). A special order of precedence applies, determined by the order in which notice of a stage is given as outlined in the table below.

At Prime Minister's Questions today, senior Conservative backbencher Sir David Davis MP, asked Sir Keir Starmer if he would "commit to giving extra time - Government time - to the bill to ensure that we get this right first time?" He argued that the time constraints on PMBs make it more difficult to get the legislation right first time and noted that in 1967 the Government provided time to allow David Steel's Abortion Bill to proceed.

The Prime Minister deflected the question. He responded that it was a "really important issue" and that he understood that there were strongly held views across the House. He added:

"I do agree with him that it is important that we ensure that any change to the law—if there is to be one—is effective. If this House gives the Bill a Second Reading, it will of course then go to Committee as usual, which will allow that more detailed scrutiny, but we do need the discussion more broadly on this important issue."

The Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, has written to all members of the Cabinet as follows:

“Dear all, Kim Leadbeater MP has said that she will seek to introduce a Private Members’ Bill to enable assisted dying. As is long-standing convention for such issues of conscience, the Prime Minister has decided to set aside collective responsibility on the merits of this bill and any others covering the same subject matter. That means that ministers can vote, or not, however they wish. The Government will therefore remain neutral on the passage of the Bill and on the matter of assisted dying. At the despatch box, ministers should reiterate that this is a question for Parliament, on which the official Government position is to remain neutral. Outside of Parliament, all ministers should take the same approach in all forms of media, including social media. Though ministers need not resile from previously stated views when directly asked about them, they should exercise discretion and should not take part in the public debate. This is an exceptional arrangement, which applies only to the question of whether, and how, Parliament should legislate on the issue of assisted dying. Collective responsibility applies as usual across the rest of Government business.”

At 9am in Committee Room 8 in the House of Commons the Senior Deputy Speaker, the Chair of Ways and Means, Nusrat Ghani MP, presided over the Private Members' Bill ballot. It is expected that one of the 20 MPs who are successful in the ballot will bring forward a bill to legalise assisted dying.