Progression of Bills through Parliament

Debate between Lewis Atkinson and Meg Hillier

Monday 8th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Lewis Atkinson]

My hon. Friend is right, as is my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater). I have heard it said that it was inappropriate for this issue to be brought as a private Member’s Bill, but equally we know that it would have been inappropriate for it to be included in any party’s manifesto. I see opponents of the Bill, as well as proponents of it, nodding in assent. Clearly, both public opinion and parliamentarians’ opinions on this issue are not split across party lines. The Prime Minister was clear in advance of the general election that he favoured a free vote to decide this issue—not on what the outcome of the issue should be—and that a private Member’s Bill was an entirely appropriate mechanism to achieve that.

I hear some opponents saying, on the one hand, that a private Member’s Bill was never appropriate to do this but, on the other hand, that it would not have been appropriate to include this issue in a manifesto. Therefore, one is left to conclude that those opponents think there is no viable vehicle for social change in this country.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

The challenge was that this Bill was launched very fast in the House of Commons, without pre-legislative scrutiny, whereas other private Members’ Bills have often been knocked around for a long while and discussed in detail, so that their flaws were recognised, adjusted and amended at different times. This Bill came very fast and there was a lot that was missing that had never been debated in the Commons, because of the way that the system works—not just for private Members’ Bills but generally. We need to legislate better in this country— I think we would all agree with that—and the Lords were doing their job.

[Lewis Atkinson]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her intervention, and I respect her significant experience and expertise in this place. Again, though, I gently say that that very argument was well rehearsed; in fact, I think she made it on Third Reading. And the judgment collectively of MPs was that it did not carry.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I did not speak on Third Reading.

[Lewis Atkinson]

Apologies—my right hon. Friend may not have spoken, but many other Members certainly made that argument, and it was a key argument for voting against the Bill on Third Reading.

We either believe in parliamentary democracy and in the primacy of the House of Commons where each of us independently reaches our judgment—I accept that it is a judgment; I am not an absolutist on this issue—or we do not. We cannot believe in parliamentary democracy when it suits us and not believe in it when it does not suit us.

Nevertheless, I agree with my right hon. Friend on the need to legislate better and I believe that the Hansard Society has put forward some recommendations about how the approach to private Members’ Bills in general could be improved. I absolutely agree that some improvements could be made.

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[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. Before I go on to make some other comments, I want to nail a few myths that have been brought up.

There has been some talk of how Government Bill Committees that Members have sat on have been shorter than the private Member’s Bill on assisted dying. That is because Government Bills are timetabled. Guillotines are put in because the usual channels get in touch to limit the debate, and there is always an in-built Government majority on those Committees. It is not unusual for more time to be spent on a Bill that does not have those constraints. It is also worth noting that the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill Committee had a majority built in by the sponsor, so there was very little chance of any change in that. A lot of people voted on Second Reading for change and discussion in Committee, but few changes were made—most of the amendments were made by the sponsor. Bills relating to hunting and equal marriage were supported by Government, whereas assisted dying is not explicitly supported by this Labour Government. If they were to support it, I think there would be a major crisis in the party, as that policy was not in the manifesto and was not discussed in any of our normal policy procedures.

It is important to correct what my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson) kept saying in his opening speech about there being no votes or opportunities to divide in the Lords. That is because Committee stage in the Lords is not an amending stage and there is no opportunity to vote—the votes happen at a later time. That is just the way that the House of Lords works, and it is really important not to criticise the Lords for following their normal procedures. There was not anything special or different in their approach to the Bill.

[Lewis Atkinson]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I need to make progress, but I will give way in a moment.

Most of the Lords speeches on the Bill were very short. Filibustering, which many hon. Members in this Chamber will have done or seen, is when Members stand up to speak for prolonged periods. Sometimes the Whips ask Members to do so, perhaps because someone is off site and they need to prolong a debate—those things happen. Yet most of the speeches in the Lords were around five minutes or less.

The pregnancy amendment, which has been discussed, was often ridiculed, but when the Bill went to the Lords, there had been no discussion in the House of Commons about what would happen if someone who was pregnant wanted an assisted death. In some jurisdictions, such a person must have a termination before they can have an assisted death, while in others, they must have given birth.

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[Dame Meg Hillier]

I have very little time left and I need to make a couple of other points. [Interruption.] Well, we have had strict instructions on time. I will, as I said at the beginning of my speech, take an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central in a moment.

The Bill that was introduced did not benefit from Government drafting, from policy development or from the whole weight of the machinery of Government and Whitehall, which includes interaction between Departments, such as on how money is spent.

[Lewis Atkinson]

Like others, I sat with officials from the Department of Health and Social Care after Second Reading, so there absolutely was DHSC involvement, including in many of the amendments that Lord Falconer introduced. Going back to the principle of parliamentary democracy, I respect the point that my hon. Friend makes, but all the issues she has highlighted were aired before Third Reading. She says that we are not a debating Chamber but a decision Chamber, so why—

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[Lewis Atkinson]

We reached a decision. Does my hon. Friend not agree that it should be respected?

[Dame Meg Hillier]

The whole point of the process is that we have a revising Chamber. If the Bill were to be reintroduced under the Parliament Act, we would be in dangerous territory. We are mischaracterising the Lords. We need to be careful about that, and very careful about using a parliamentary mechanism such as the Parliament Act to set a precedent for any mad, bad or dangerous Government to take things that were never in their manifesto and ram them through Parliament via a private Member’s Bill. That may appeal to many people in this Chamber in relation to the assisted dying Bill, but we must also look at the long-term precedent. In considering how we legislate in this place, let us not demonise the Lords for doing their job in the current system.