Progression of Bills through Parliament

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Lewis Atkinson]

I agree that private Members’ Bills provide an important avenue for democratically elected Members of the Commons to seek important legislative change. For decades, they have been a long-established precedent in how this country introduces social change—whether that is the decriminalisation of homosexuality and abortion, or the abolition of the death penalty. Fundamentally, I do not believe that the unelected Lords should be able to block such key social change, but I will come on to some of the issues that my hon. Friend raised.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Lewis Atkinson]

I will introduce the petitioners first, because they ultimately prompted the debate; I will then be happy to take further interventions.

The petition was initially proposed by Nathaniel Dye, a man who felt the urgency for change and looked at his Parliament to deliver it. Nat was a music teacher, and after being diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer in his mid-30s, he campaigned for cancer awareness and support, being recognised with an MBE for his incredible efforts.

Nathaniel knew he was going to die, and he believed that Parliament should engage seriously with the issues that affected him and many others with terminal illness. He campaigned strongly in favour of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which was introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) in the last Session. As a member of that Bill Committee, I had the privilege of meeting Nat on a number of occasions. He was a remarkable man.

In his final months, Nat became frustrated—angry, it is fair to say—at how the Lords were dealing with their consideration of the Bill. True to form, he decided to do something about it, starting the petition that we are here to debate today. Nat died in January this year. I pay tribute to him and his family, who have continued to support his efforts following his death. I am grateful to Rebecca Scott, his sister, for meeting me as part of the engagement process for this debate.

After Nathaniel’s death, his friend Sophie Blake became the petition’s sponsor, and it is a pleasure to see her in the Gallery today, as it was to speak with her in preparation for this debate, alongside a campaigner from Dignity in Dying. Sophie has incurable stage 4 secondary breast cancer, first diagnosed in 2020. She is allergic to opioids, which form an important part of the palliative care pain relief toolkit, and unfortunately her family have experienced what she describes as “bad cancer deaths”. She does not want her daughter, Maya—also in the Public Gallery—to run the risk of being left with those memories. She wants the option of an assisted death if she feels that that is required.

The key demand of Nathaniel, Sophie and the 114,000 petitioners is that Bills supported by MPs and the public must be able to complete all stages of the parliamentary process and to become law; and that the unelected House of Lords should be able to scrutinise, yes, but not block legislation backed by the elected Commons. Sophie and Nathaniel were both determined that the voices of terminally ill people should be at the centre of parliamentary consideration of the Bill. They closely monitored its various stages. They were in the Public Gallery of the House of Commons on Second Reading and of Committee Room 11 for some of the 100 hours of Bill Committee proceedings, where we made more than 100 amendments, including 30 proposed by MPs who had opposed the Bill on Second Reading.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Edward. The challenge this case brings up has been seen over and again in this place. It is not just about the legitimacy of the Commons. The hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson) said this is about not just parliamentary democracy, but constitutional reform. That is a perfectly acceptable position to hold, but it is not a matter specifically related to the assisted dying Bill.

What the hon. Member is suggesting, and it is a perfectly legitimate point to make, is that, actually, our parliamentary system is completely broken, that no revision is possible from the second Chamber, and that the second Chamber should not have a voice on how those amendments are made. Again, that is a perfectly acceptable point to make, because if we are to have the system that we currently have, and if we are to use it in the way that we currently do, I am afraid the position that the Lords have taken is completely legitimate. What they have done—totally within their own rules and totally in the way that House works—is that they have listened to outside voices; they have heard from other sources, as well as from those that were heard in Committee or in the debate in our own Chamber; they have tabled some amendments, some of which have been accepted and others rejected by various people in the Lords; and they have come to a position.

[Lizzi Collinge]

Will the right hon. Member give way?

[Tom Tugendhat]

I will not be giving way on that. If the hon. Member for Sunderland Central does not like that position, or the way in which the Lords run their business, that, again, is a perfectly legitimate thing to say, but then he is asking for very fundamental constitutional reform. Again, that is completely okay, but to do it on the basis of a petition of 140,000 names strikes me as a somewhat ambitious reading of the settled will of the British people. We have somewhere between 60 million and 70 million people—I am not quite sure where the figure sits today—and 140,000 does not sit very high against that number; it sits pretty low, frankly.

[Lewis Atkinson]

I think the right hon. Member is rather mischaracterising what I said. As I said, and as the Hansard Society says, I think there is a clear constitutional response within our existing settlement. It is not about fundamental Lords reform, though I may be in favour of that; it is about use of the Parliament Act. Does he agree that, if the Commons agrees to this again, using the Parliament Act is entirely appropriate?

[Tom Tugendhat]

On the contrary, I think what the hon. Gentleman is arguing, although he may not think he is arguing it, and he is perfectly entitled to ignore what he is arguing—it happens all the time in this place, it is absolutely standard, for Members on our Benches to make one argument and mean another—[Laughter.] Members on all of our Benches. Come on! Let’s not have the hypocrisy; we all know it is true.

It is absolutely true that we hear, on every side of the House, people making one argument and meaning another all the time. Today, the hon. Gentleman is making the argument for constitutional reform, but he actually means he is in favour of assisted dying. Again, that is a completely acceptable position, but it is not frank; it is not being straight with the House and it is not being straight with people.

All I ask on this is that, when we look down at the questions that have been raised and when we hear, for example, the voices of the disability groups, the various different medical groups and all the royal colleges, all of which rejected this Bill, and we say to them, “Look, we really must legislate at speed because there is a pressing need to do so,”—the hon. Member is really making the Mark Zuckerberg argument. He is making the “move fast and break things” argument.

[Lewis Atkinson]

rose—

[Tom Tugendhat]

I will not be giving way again. That is a perfectly acceptable argument for those who can afford to fail, but the problem is that the hon. Member is not dealing with the investment of a few people, which may or may not start a business or software company that fails or succeeds; he is playing with the lives of thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people.

[Dr Opher]

Will the right hon. Member give way?

[Tom Tugendhat]

I will not be giving way again. The hon. Member for Sunderland Central is instead saying that the role of democracy is to behave like the private interest group of a small cabal. I do not believe that is the case. I believe that the role of democracy is to measure, to weigh and to take matters slowly. If, on a matter of life and death, that is not the case, when are we supposed to be measured and take time?

Before people say that we had a long time in Committee, they should never forget that we start working on Government Bills years before—not weeks, not months, but years. Any of us who have introduced a Bill in this place know exactly what I mean. A Bill starts as an idea. It takes two years, normally, before it even gets to the Leader of the House and his various Bill committees, where we test, adjust and play with the Bill with the different Ministers, and the write-round process. The argument that that period of expertise, from Government, civil servants, lawyers, medical experts and all the others, can be replaced with a brief hearing in Committee is, I am afraid, simply not true.

[Lizzi Collinge]

Brief? Will the right hon. Member give way?

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Member may think it is long, but she really has no idea of time if that is her perception. The reality is that Government Bills take time because they have to be got right. This Bill is wrong. The only thing that stopped it was the Lords. If the hon. Member for Sunderland Central wants to abolish the Lords, that is fine, but if he could make that argument, I think we would all be a lot happier.

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[Sir Alan Campbell]

That is the case in the Commons. I am trying to recall Second Reading, but I assume that is what happened. If there is a majority in favour of a Bill and a motion to bring the debate to an end, that motion will succeed—it does not matter what the Government of the day say. I was talking about other Bills that the Government might dispute, rather than distinctly private Members’ Bills where there is a matter of conscience and a free vote.

The right hon. Member for North West Hampshire is drawing out the contrast, and there is a wider debate about how the House of Lords conducts its business. As I have said before, at the end of the day if the House of Lords to carry out independent scrutiny, it is not for the Government of the day to set those rules. It might be for them to look at an issue in the context of the Parliament Act, for example, but it is not for them to set the day-to-day rules. Unless the Government had a majority in the House of Lords, they would not be able to do that.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The right hon. Gentleman is making the entirely valid point that democracy is not just what happens in either Chamber, whether it is the Lords or the Commons, and democracy cannot be reduced to a number, whether it is an electoral number at a general election or a number in the Chamber. Democracy is what we do between times.

I keep hearing that we Conservatives had 14 years in government—I do not deny that, and I recognise many of the errors that we made. But is it not also true that there were 10 years between the first and second votes on this campaign? Much of the democratic process could have been done in those 10 years through public debate, engagement and lobbying, instead of its being reduced to the actions that happened in the Chamber? Frankly, that is reducing democracy to a game of mathematics.

[Sir Alan Campbell]

This is cold comfort to people who want to see the Bill pass, and pass soon, but I would say to the right hon. Gentleman that this has all been part of that process. I do not want to play with hypothetical situations, but let us imagine that this legislation was taken forward. I have no evidence to suggest this will happen, other than the fact that it could, but if one of the MPs near the top of this year’s private Members’ Bills ballot decided to pick up the assisted dying Bill and run with it, there would be lessons to be learned. There would be lessons about how we use time, and about how wide the scope of the Bill should be because of the amendments that would be tabled. There would be a lesson about how the Lords should deal with the situation, even though it would be deeply uncomfortable for them.

I gently say to the proponents and opponents of the Bill that, if someone picks it up and runs with it, and prays in aid the Parliament Act—as I have said, our view is that it falls within the scope of that Act—there would be rules around that, too. Lessons need to be learned on top of what the right hon. Member for Tonbridge is getting at, which is about how we take public opinion with us and build consensus, which, as we have heard, takes time.