A landmark bill that would have legalised assisted dying for terminally ill adults in England and Wales has failed to become law after running out of parliamentary time on Friday, following months of procedural obstruction in the House of Lords.

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, introduced by MP Kim Leadbeater in 2024, proposed allowing adults with a terminal diagnosis and fewer than six months to live to apply for an assisted death, subject to approval from two doctors and an expert panel. It passed a vote in the House of Commons — the elected lower chamber of the UK Parliament — last June, but never reached a comparable vote in the House of Lords, the upper chamber composed largely of appointed, unelected peers. Under parliamentary rules governing bills proposed by backbench MPs rather than the government, debate was restricted to Fridays, sharply limiting the time available. When the parliamentary session ended, so did the bill.

The immediate cause of its collapse was a flood of more than 1,200 amendments tabled in the Lords, with over 800 attributed to just seven peers. More than 200 MPs signed a letter accusing opponents of "deliberate delaying tactics," and Lord Charlie Falconer, who sponsored the bill in the upper house, called the manoeuvre "pure obstructionism" and "an absolute travesty of our processes." Opponents, however, argued the scrutiny was legitimate and necessary. Gordon Macdonald of the Care Not Killing campaign said the Lords had exposed the bill as "skeleton legislation riddled with gaping holes," while the Christian Medical Fellowship warned that no assisted dying service could be made "safe, equitable, and resistant to placing unacceptable pressure on the most vulnerable."

The bill's failure comes as the debate over end-of-life choices remains deeply personal for many. The case of Wendy Duffy, a 56-year-old woman from the West Midlands in central England who travelled to Switzerland to end her life on the same day the bill fell, drew renewed attention to the issue. Duffy, who was physically healthy but had struggled profoundly after the death of her only child, paid £10,000 to the Pegasos clinic in Basel — one of several Swiss facilities that offer assisted dying to foreign nationals under Swiss law, which permits assisted suicide in certain circumstances.

Supporters of the legislation vowed to renew their efforts when Parliament reconvenes in mid-May. Leadbeater said advocates would "go again" in the next session, though parliamentary rules mean a new bill will likely need to be introduced by a different MP. The broader international context lends weight to their determination: legislators in the British dependencies of Jersey and the Isle of Man have already passed assisted dying laws, while the Netherlands has permitted the practice since 2002. Scotland's devolved parliament rejected a similar bill in March. "The issue is not going away — there's a very clear direction of travel around the world," Leadbeater said.