62. From Commons Victory To Lords Gridlock: Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill Update with Nathan Stilwell, Humanists UK

In this short update epsiode, we are pleased to welcome back Nathan Stilwell, Humanists UK's Assisted dying Campaign Coordinator, Campaigns and Communications Manager at My Death My Decision and a member of The Assisted Dying Coalition Secretariat.

Nathan explains what has happened since the Assisted Dying Bill passed the House of Commons, why it now risks falling in the House of Lords, and what supporters can do to help ensure it becomes law.

This episode follows Nathan’s first appearance on Humanism Now in November 2024 and offers a timely update on one of the most significant ethical debates in UK politics.

References & further reading

• Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill – Publications  
  – UK Parliament, bill text, amendments, and parliamentary documents
• Ask the House of Lords to support assisted dying
  – Humanists UK campaign tool for contacting peers
• 26. Nathan Stilwell on the Need for Compassionate Assisted Dying Legislation & End of Life Care
  – Humanism Now, November 2024.
• MPs back proposals to legalise assisted dying
  – BBC News, 29 November 2024.
• What has happened to the assisted dying bill?
  – BBC News, 12 December 2025.
• Assisted dying bill ‘near impossible’ to pass House of Lords, say supporters
  – The Guardian, 22 January 2026.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome Back Nathan Stilwell
• 0:40 Lords Amendments And Filibuster Tactics
• 2:46 How Challenges to this Bill Compares to Others
• 3:41 Ridiculous Amendments Highlighted
• 5:07 Legitimate Scrutiny Vs Bad Faith
• 8:47 Comparing Debate Quality Commons Vs Lords
• 10:21 How The Bill Could Still Progress
• 12:07 Impact on those Awaiting an Assisted Death
• 13:25 Constitutional Risks & Questions of Legitimacy
• 14:38 How Listeners Can Support

Transcript

James Hogson: 0:01

Welcome back to Humanism Now. I'm your host, James Hodgson. In this bonus episode of the podcast, I wanted to invite back Nathan Stilwell from Humanist UK, who joined us about a year ago to discuss what was at the time a bill going through Parliament on the legalization of persisted dying. That bill has since passed, but of course that has not yet come into law. And there's been quite a lot of discussion since then in the news. So I wanted to invite Nathan back onto the show just to give an update on the bill, the objections, the conversation which is happening, and what happens next. And of course, how you listeners can get involved and support. So Nathan, welcome back to Humanism Now.

Nathan Stilwell: 0:38

Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, so last year the bill passed the House of Commons. And for many bills, both government bills and private members' bills, which is what an individual MP, an individual politician, tries to change the law, that's normally the biggest hurdle. The biggest hurdle is getting the democratically elected politicians to say, yes, we support that bill. So the bill passed all of its stages in the Commons. It passed by an absolute majority, and then goes to essentially the House of Lords, where normally they're known as like an the scrutinizing chamber. So they're meant to be looking at kind of the bill in intense detail and looking at any fine-tuning, any issues that still need to be hashed out. So many people heard the bill passed. We've already had reports of terminally ill people and going to their hospital, going to the hospital and saying, I would liken this is to death, thinking that the law has already changed. But actually it's still in there, the House of Lords. And what has happened is over 1,100 amendments by proposed changes to the bill have been put forward mostly by members of the House of Lords known as peers, who are against the bill, who there was no changes that we could make to the bill ever that would alleviate what their concerns are or put the bill into a shape that they would support. So our point of view very much is that many of these amendments, if not a massive majority of these amendments, are actually pretty egregious, are not actually looking at safety or looking at changes or looking at process, but actually intentionally designed to slow down the debate. And a really important point is all bills in parliament, essentially during what's known as a parliamentary session, they have to pass all stages. So they have to go through all of these sections of the debate. Now we know now that the end of the parliamentary session will be about May, June, and the bill has to be finished by then. And if it's not finished by then, it simply fails. Without a vote, without anything like that, the bill just fails. And at the moment, it's looking very possible that after everything we've been through, the bill could potentially fail by not passing it through as stages because of all of these amendments that have been put forward.

James Hogson: 2:56

So just to give it, I guess put it into perspective, you said there's over a thousand amendments that have been put forward. Typically, how many amendments are put forward at this stage when a bill goes through parliament?

Nathan Stilwell: 3:07

Yeah, it's really hard to tell. Like there are some private members' bills that have literally passed a stage without amendments or without one or two. Yeah. And there's also bigger bills in the parliament than the assisted dying bill. There's there's huge bills that sometimes these huge bills, like things like the Online Safety Act, really big health bills, have already a thousand amendments isn't crazy, but a thousand amendments per 52-page bill, which is called the Assisted Dying Bill, is crazy. And if you look at, for example, amendments per page, the assisted dying bill has about 22 amendments per page at the moment. Now, for the next biggest bill, you know, with the, you know, if we're drawing equivalents, the next biggest one has five amendments per page. So we really are talking like for the bill, this is a huge, insane number of amendments that are just going to be impossible to debate in the time that we've got.

James Hogson: 3:53

Yeah. So could you give us some examples of some of the amendments which are possibly more frivolous that are really holding up the process?

Nathan Stilwell: 4:02

Yeah, absolutely. So the one that's been cited the most is a pregnancy test for all applicants. So that would literally mean men over the age of 65 would have to give a negative pregnancy test in order to be able to access an assisted there. There's also been one's a mandatory visit to a geriatrician. Now, obviously, the majority, the clear majority of people are going to be over the age of 65, they're going to be terminally ill, they will would have lived a full life. But we know internationally that, for example, in Victoria, Australia, 15% of applicants were under the age of 65. You know, there will be 20-year-olds, 30-year-olds, 40-year-olds who will have a terminal illness and seek an assisted death. So to force them to go to a geriatrician is quite frankly ridiculous. We've also seen amendments such as banning anybody who, you know, any applicant from leaving the country in the final 12 months of their lives. So, you know, anybody doing a bucket list, visiting family abroad, seeking medical treatment abroad, any reason they've left the country in 12 months prior to applying, they would be banned from applying. So these are sort of amendments that we're pointing out, being like, they're clearly ridiculous. They clearly don't invite good scrutiny or good debate. Those are the ones I point out as being designed to really slow down the process.

James Hogson: 5:22

But I think one of the main concerns and criticisms prior to the bill passing and since has been the level of scrutiny and criticism and debate. I just wonder what your view is on that. And also what do you feel are the more legitimate either amendments that are being proposed or debates that still need to take place before any bill were to come into effect?

Nathan Stilwell: 5:44

Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, a solid argument has been that this is a private member's bill, meaning it's an individual politician trying to change the law rather than the government as a whole. And when the government tries to change the law, they do a lot of what's called pre-legislative scrutiny. So they do consultations, they do research and everything like that. And the a core argument has been that hasn't been done, this private member's bill, which in one sense is true, but in the other sense, there has been so much research into assisted dying. Parliament has done a crazy amount of research into assisted dying. Literally the year before, no, in fact, the same year the bill was introduced, there was uh an inquiry into assisted dying by the Health and Social Care Committee that had something like 63,000 responses from the public, 300, 400 bits of written evidence, days of oral evidence sessions. And I would really quite strongly argue that assisted dying has probably had more pre-list specific scrutiny than probably, I would say, most bills that are put forward in parliament. And then if we look at the scrutiny that this specific bill has had, it had nearly 100 hours. In fact, I think it had more than 100 hours of debate in the Commons, which again is extraordinary. Most bills in the Commons don't have as much as 100 hours of scrutiny of looking into them already. So already by the time it's reached the Lords, it's already had a really intense amount of kind of scrutiny yet. That also means like the public and commentators reading the bill, looking at the bill, evidence from experts essentially provided to the bill. So I'd say it's really it's been one of the most intensible scrutiny aspects of legislation we've ever had. Now, that doesn't mean that laws don't have a role. Like the way that this has gone through Parliament means that both a small committee of MPs and all MPs on a whole have suggested changes to it. And certain of those changes individually work, but when they're put together, they don't. So a key example is at the report stage, which is the one before the final stage in the Commons, an MP called Nashah put forward an amendment trying to stop essentially people with eating disorders from accessing assessment dying. Or people, for example, refusing food and drink before they had their assisted death to try and make them meet that threshold. Now, I'm not going to debate whether I think that's a good idea or not, but the majority of MPs supported it, so that's in the bill. But the way that it's worded, I think, could potentially stop someone who's permanent ill who has a reduced appetite. It's very common for elderly people or terminally ill people to have a very reduced appetite, especially in the last days, weeks, months of their lives. So that's something that I think is really important. Okay, it's absolutely important that the lords look at that amendment. They look, they can change the wording. And in fact, amendments to that have been put down to change that wording. So that's an example of it. Like it is entirely legitimate that the laws look at this process and say, can a termally ill person get through it? Are we balancing safety with the fact that the person go trying to apply is going to be termally ill, is going to be dying by definition. And that's a really important and difficult balancing act. So that's entirely legitimate. But I don't think pregnancy tests for men, for example, meets that threshold of being legitimate.

James Hogson: 8:52

And I remember at the time when this was going through that it was one of the rare occasions that there was a lot of commendment for how this was debated in Parliament. And people were saying this is the UK House of Commons and parliamentary system at its best because people were, or members of Parliament, were permitted to speak freely, oftentimes very emotionally, frankly, and openly. And it was a really quite a compelling debate to watch.

Nathan Stilwell: 9:14

Yes. And I think that the House of Lords has already received quite a lot of criticism with how they've conducted their debate. And in fact, there was a debate last Thursday about giving this bill more time to make sure that it can get that scrutiny and it can pass. And during that debate, several members of the House of Lords said, our reputation is being hurt by this. And again, it's not only the amendment, but like during the debate, I would say we haven't seen the same quality of debate. Lord Farmer, for example, he called it an atheist bill, you know, this is a bill for only people who don't believe in God because it for X, Y, and Z reasons. And then in a different debate, that same Lord mentioned, I think it was Caroline of Flack, uh, Goebbels after the Nuremberg trials, and Jeffrey Epstein, all in the same sentence, talk about people who are dying by suicide. I don't know how you can say that's legitimate scrutiny. I don't know how you can say that's a debate that's necessary whilst debating this really important issue. So I would say that it actually, where we are right now, has probably harmed the reputation of the House of Lords. And what many lords are saying is please don't harm our reputation further. Please conduct this debate with the same seriousness and importance as the debates have been in the comments.

James Hogson: 10:25

What needs to happen now in order for the bill to pass? There's obviously these are over a thousand proposed amendments. Does each one need to be debated individually? You know, how do we get to a point by May where this bill can pass as has been approved already?

Nathan Stilwell: 10:39

Yeah, I think that's one of the most difficult and it's a question that's being posed right now. So amendments are grouped together into these groups where they can be debated effectively. And so far there's been 84 groups of the amendments. And each debate through the House of Laws has said we get through at least 10 of these groups that are done around subjects here around should the court be involved or should be eligible and things like that. But each debate we get through about two to four groups, so clearly just incredibly slowly. So some of the things that have been put forward is making larger groups, it is grouping these into okay, what are the big issues? Let's debate them together so we can get to the next stage. There's also been the idea that the debate just goes on a lot longer. So at the moment, it ha the debate has to be on Friday. It starts at 10 a.m., it finishes at 3 p.m. And so obviously, one uh one solution is simply to start a lot earlier and potentially say, look, we're gonna we're gonna hit this group and we're going to debate until we hit this group. We're gonna reach this milestone, and if we end up debating until 2, 3 a.m., so be it's and I mean there's already been a lot of kind of backlash to that, but that is actually how the House of Commons works. Like it's not at all extraordinary for the House of Commons to sit late in the night to be able to get through everything that they need to get through. And if they need to do that for the assisted dying bill, I think, especially if you were talking, to example, for eternally ill person, they'd be saying, Yeah, I think the Lord should be working hard to get this bill through. This is incredibly important to me. And therefore, I think it's worth the the kind of political time that's spent on it.

James Hogson: 12:11

And for the people that this bill impacts the most, those who are hoping or potentially waiting for an assisted death in the UK. If this doesn't pass by the deadline, what does that mean both practically for the bill and those who are waiting for it? But also constitutionally, I don't know that it's common the bills that pass in the House of Commons then are at the system at the Lord's stage, or whether that causes quite an issue.

Nathan Stilwell: 12:40

Yeah, I mean, firstly, talking about the terminally ill people, the people this bill is for, I spoke to a woman called Hannah Slater recently. She's a third-year-old mum of one, but she has a terminal cancer, and she wants this bill for herself. She says that she doesn't want to die, but she doesn't want her death to be full of pain and and suffering, and therefore having that right to choose would would allow her to focus on the now, focus on her son, and focus on what's important rather than worrying about death. And so this bill for people like Hannah is massively important, it is incredibly important, in fact. But what happens if it fails? Again, that's the biggest question that's being posed at the moment. Quite literally, the bill just has to be, if it fails, it has to be reintroduced. A new politician has to say, look, I'm going to try again and see what mechanisms are available for it. But what it means constitutionally, I think people are, this is already leading to people questioning the House of Lords. It's something that we as humanists have already called for a while. There are 26 bishops who sit by right. They have Church of England bishops, by the way, so only representing one denomination of Christianity who sit in the House of Lords. There's already a bill going through to get rid of the hereditary peers, so literally politicians who it's through the male bloodline is how they sit in the House of Lords. So there are already these questions of legitimacy. I genuinely honestly feel that if the assisted dying bill fails, the questioning of that legitimacy is going to be louder, and more people are going to question why we have a huge group, 850 on Alex APAs, choosing how we die and making that decision for us. I think that's why so many members of the House of Lords have already stood up and said, look, this is really hurting our reputation. And if we block this, and again, what makes it almost more egregious is not blocking it from a vote. It's not like they're coming together and saying, we're blocking this. It's blocking it using procedure. Essentially, it's what we would say is game playing in a way to stop what it you know is a popular bill, is what the public wants to support from going through.

James Hogson: 14:43

And if anybody listening would like to support the bill further and assist with your work, how can they contact you and what's the best way to get involved?

Nathan Stilwell: 14:52

Absolutely. This is what's also already difficult is members of the House of Lords aren't used to being contacted. It's not like you have a Lord in the same way that you have an MP. So that makes it more difficult. So we at Humanist UK have developed a tool. So you can go onto our website and you can find a member of the House of Lords and you can write to them and say, assisted dying is important to me. I want this bill to pass. And I think that public pressure is actually really important, right? Is the members of the House of Lords aren't used to hearing from the public in this way. And so it's really important that public pressure says we're watching, we're listening, we really want this to pass, and it's important to me that this passes. I think at the moment that's one of the most important things you can do. I will say that this has been incredibly hard work. We've had to go through all 1,100 amendments and look at them and look at our view on them and recommend what we think they should pass the bill, which takes a lot of time, takes a lot of effort. So even a small donation helps in that effort, helps in that work that needs to be done in order to make sure that this bill is safe, but also just at this point pass this. Like it's really important for you really have to put yourself in the shoes of a terminal or person right now, watching this debate, watching the potential of the Lords filibustering it or stopping it. And we have to build that public pressure, otherwise there is no chance that the law will change.

James Hogson: 16:12

Well, Nathan, thank you so much again for your hard work. Do wish you all the best with your campaigning. And we'll include links to everything in the show notes. But great to see you back again. And hopefully we'll invite you back for a third time, maybe, to discuss a different topic. That'd be great. Thank you very much. Thanks for joining us.

Humanise Live: 16:29

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