Controversial legislation to legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide in England and Wales is set to fail because of a lack of parliamentary time [1].
The Private Members Bill was proposed by a Labour MP, but did not have the official backing of the Government. While it narrowly passed the House of Commons, it has met with a barrage of resistance in the House of Lords [2].
The Labour chief whip in the Lords, Roy Kennedy, said this week that the government would not give the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill more time before the May deadline, when all legislation must have passed or automatically falls.
The team behind the bill also confirmed they now expected the legislation in its current form to fail.
The debate will now focus on what happens after May, with proponents of a change in the law saying the public polling and the repeated backing of MPs means that this legislation should be given a second chance.
However, the government is likely to continue keeping the issue at arms length, since there is no single cabinet position on the issue and ministers like Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood are implacably hostile to the change.