Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill 2024-25: Progress of the bill

Warning: This briefing discusses issues around suicide which some readers may find distressing.

On 16 October 2024, Kim Leadbeater (Labour) presented the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill 2024-25 to Parliament, having been drawn highest in the private members’ bill ballot for the 2024-25 session.

The bill’s long title states it would “allow adults who are terminally ill, subject to safeguards and protections, to request and be provided with assistance to end their own life” in England and Wales.

Full background on the bill, and its provisions as originally introduced, can be found in the Library briefing The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill 2024-25.

The second reading debate took place on 29 November 2024, when the bill was approved on a free vote by 330 votes to 275 and committed to a public bill committee for further scrutiny.

Terminology

There is no consensus on which terminology to use when discussing whether people should be legally permitted to seek assistance to end their own lives. Consequently, a range of terms are used, principally ‘assisted suicide’ and ‘assisted dying’, and the choice of term often reflects underlying views on the debate. Further background is set out in section 1 of the Library briefing The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill 2024-25.

This Library briefing uses a range of terms, which have been chosen to reflect the wording of the bill (and the explanatory notes), the existing criminal law, and the terminology used by people and organisations who have commented on the debate. The choice of terminology is not intended to endorse or reflect any stance on the debate about changing the law.

Committee stage

The bill was considered by a public bill committee over 29 sittings between
21 January 2025 and 25 March 2025. A compilation of the debates (PDF) for all sittings is available online, as is a consolidated list of committee decisions (PDF).

The committee considered over 500 amendments to the bill during its line-by- line scrutiny and approximately one third were agreed.

A table comparing the bill as introduced to the bill as amended in committee is available on this landing page (see ‘supporting documents’).

Amendments to remove court oversight

The most significant change the committee made to the bill was to remove court approval of assisted dying. The bill, as introduced, would have required a terminally ill person to apply to the High Court for a declaration that the requirements of the bill had been met, once both doctors agreed the eligibility criteria had been satisfied.

At committee stage this was replaced with multidisciplinary “Assisted Dying Review Panels”, consisting of a senior legal figure, a consultant psychiatrist, and a social worker. The panels would determine, among other things, that a person was terminally ill and had capacity to make the decision to end their own life.

The bill, as amended in committee, would also allow the Prime Minister to appoint a “Voluntary Assisted Dying Commissioner”. The person appointed would need to be (or have been) a judge of the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal, or the High Court. The commissioner’s principal functions would include making appointments to a list of persons eligible to sit on the proposed Assisted Dying Review Panels and determining applications for reconsideration of panel decisions.

These changes were tabled by Kim Leadbeater (Labour), the sponsor of the bill, and were subject to significant debate and multiple divisions.

Other amendments

Other key amendments made by the committee include:

• changing the responsibility for monitoring the operation of, and compliance with, the bill from the chief medical officers to the Voluntary Assisted Dying Commissioner
• requiring the doctors assessing assisted dying requests to have undertaken detailed training on:
  • domestic abuse, including coercive control and financial abuse
  • reasonable adjustments and safeguards for autistic people and people with a learning disability
• making independent advocates available for those who “may experience substantial difficulty in understanding the processes or information relevant” to the assisted dying process
• amending the proposed criminal offences relating to the use of dishonesty, coercion or pressure and to the falsification or destruction of documentation in a request for assisted dying, including increased maximum sentences and a requirement for the Director of Public Prosecutions to consent to any prosecutions for an offence under the bill
• increasing the commencement period from two years to four years in England, meaning that the majority of the bill’s provisions must be implemented within four years of the bill becoming law

The bill would extend to Wales, where health is a devolved matter but the criminal law is reserved to the UK Parliament. The bill was amended so that the four-year commencement period would not apply to Wales. Instead, most of the bill’s provisions would come into force only after draft regulations stipulating the start date(s) had been laid before, and approved by, the Senedd Cymru (Welsh Parliament).

Government documents on the bill’s impacts

The government published an impact assessment, equality impact assessment and human rights memorandum for the amended bill on 2 May 2025. The government said it remained “neutral on the substantive policy questions” raised by the bill and that these documents did not, therefore, set out a policy position on assisted dying. The documents had instead been published as part of the government’s responsibility “to make sure any legislation that passes through Parliament is workable, effective and enforceable”.

Remaining stages

The bill’s remaining stages (report and third reading) were originally scheduled to take place on 25 April 2025. However, this was postponed to 16 May 2025, after Kim Leadbeater said she had “listened carefully to members on all sides of the issue” who had said they would welcome more time to consider the amendments made at committee stage.

A regularly updated list of amendments and new clauses that have been tabled for report stage is available on the Parliament website (see ‘Amendment Paper’). It will be for the Speaker to decide which amendments and new clauses to select for debate, and how these should be grouped. At the time of writing, the selection and grouping of amendments for report stage had not been confirmed.