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A Bill to allow assisted dying has been reintroduced to the House of Commons after the progress of previous legislation was ended in the House of Lords.
On 17 June 2026, a Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was added to the order paper in the House of Commons by Lauren Edwards, Labour MP for Rochester and Strood.
“[It is a] Bill to allow adults who are terminally ill, subject to safeguards and protections, to request and be provided with assistance to end their own life; and for connected purposes,” the order paper said.
The Bill has been introduced as a private members’ Bill — the same mechanism under which a previous assisted dying Bill was brought to Parliament in October 2024 by another Labour backbencher, Kim Leadbeater.
A private members’ Bill has no official government support and so is much less likely to become law.
The Bill introduced by Leadbeater was supported by MPs through all three of its required readings in the House of Commons, but its progress ended in March 2026 when it reached its committee stage in the House of Lords. More than 1,200 amendments were tabled by members of the House of Lords.
Edwards came second in a ballot of MPs wanting to introduce private members’ Bills, held in May 2026.
In a statement published on social media on 14 June 2026, Edwards emphasised that she would use her opportunity to bring back an assisted dying bill.
She said: “After giving the matter a great deal of thought, I will be reintroducing the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. This long overdue change to the law was supported by MPs during the last session of Parliament and was prevented from passing only by the decision of a minority in the House of Lords to talk it out and stop it coming to a vote.
“If MPs pass it again, as I believe they will, it will go back to the [House of] Lords who will then be asked to finish the job they should have completed earlier this year.
“They will be free to amend the Bill if they wish and return it to the [House of] Commons to decide whether and what form the Bill should become law. That is how democracy works.”
During the original Bill’s passage through Parliament, an amendment was introduced that would have allowed pharmacists to have opted out of the assisted dying process.
A similar Bill on assisted dying that had been introduced to the Scottish Parliament was rejected in a vote held in March 2026, amid concerns over pharmacist protections.
Tase Oputu, president of the Royal College of Pharmacy, said: “While we take a neutral stance on assisted dying, as the [then] Royal Pharmaceutical Society, we engaged with MPs and peers to ensure that the previous Bill protected the right of pharmacists not to participate in an assisted dying procedure. It is crucial this provision is carried through to the new Bill.”
