2.2 – The comparative powers of the House of Commons and House of Lords
One of the intriguing parliamentary questions for 2026 is what will happen to the Assisted Dying Bill in the House of Lords. The Bill passed Third Reading in the House of Commons on 20 June 2025 following a free vote, in which MPs could vote according to their personal conscience rather than following the party whip. However, six months later, it remains in the House of Lords. The bill passed its Second Reading in the Lords on 12 September and then entered Committee Stage on 18 December. In the House of Lords, the chamber sits as a ‘committee of the whole House’, rather than forming a Public Bill Committee, as normally happens in the Commons.
So far, during Committee Stage in the Lords, the Bill has seen over 1,100 amendments put forward. This is a remarkable number, even for such an inherently divisive Bill. The amendments cover a range of issues, including:
- Tighter safeguards (mental health checks, anti-coercion measures)
- Narrower eligibility (excluding certain groups)
- More oversight (judicial or clearly recorded consent)
The House of Lords has begun considering the amendments put forward. However, with such a volume, this is a huge task. Many MPs have begun to criticise the Lords and have argued that its actions towards the Bill veer towards being unconstitutional.
There are three main concrete constitutional expectations placed on the House of Lords when it comes to legislation. First, under the Salisbury Convention, it should not reject outright a Bill that was included in the governing party’s manifesto. Second, the House of Lords should not oppose or insist on amendments to budgetary measures due to the financial privilege of the House of Commons. Finally, there is an expectation that the House of Lords does not unduly delay its consideration of legislation.
In the case of the Assisted Dying Bill, none of these conventions risk being breached. It was not a manifesto Bill and was, in fact, not even a Government Bill, but a Private Member’s Bill. It is not a budgetary issue, and the House of Lords has quickly begun its scrutiny of it.
However, there is a broader constitutional concept at issue. This is whether, despite the disapplicability of these conventions, there is an expectation that the House of Lords respects the primacy of the House of Commons and does not reject or unduly delay the Assisted Dying Bill.
Proponents of this view would argue that the House of Lords is an entirely unelected chamber and therefore has no democratic mandate to prevent, or significantly delay, a Bill that has already been passed by the Commons.
Critics of this view would argue that the House of Commons is woefully deficient in its detailed scrutiny of Bills. The House of Lords spends significant time scrutinising legislation. For example, in 2020, the House of Commons spent just 32 hours considering the Agriculture Act, compared to 96 hours in the House of Lords. The Lords go through Bills line-by-line in a way that the House of Commons simply does not. If the House of Lords is unable to fulfil that role, the quality of scrutiny will diminish dramatically.
The sheer volume of amendments that have been put down has seen the amount of time allocated to the bill’s deliberation increased, with the Labour chief whip announcing that an an extra ten days would be made available for debate, which will take it up to 24 April. The bill, as amended by the Lords, will then need to be considered by the House of Commons (a stage often referred to as ‘ping pong’), with both Houses needing to agree on identical forms of the bill before it can become law.
The current Parliamentary Session is expected to run until May, and the Assisted Dying Bill will need to have passed all its stages to become an Act of Parliament. Should it not do so, it will start from scratch in the next session. The next few weeks will be fascinating from a constitutional standpoint.