Assisted dying MP accuses Lords of trying to sink bill

Members of the House of Lords have proposed "totally unnecessary" and "very cruel" amendments to the assisted dying bill in an attempt to scupper it, the MP leading the campaign said yesterday.

- Kiran Stacey

Kim Leadbeater said she believed peers opposed to the bill were trying to block it by proposing hundreds of changes, including one requiring terminally ill people to be filmed as they undergo an assisted death.

The Lords were to vote on some of those yesterday during a fourth day of debate on the bill, with six more sessions scheduled for the new year. Supporters now fear there will not be enough time to debate the more than 1,000 proposed changes before the parliamentary session ends, putting the bill at risk of collapsing.

Leadbeater told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "What we're seeing with this bill, sadly, is well over 1,000 amendments have been tabled, many of which are totally unnecessary and some of which are actually just very cruel when we think about the cohort of people that the bill is designed to help."