London, United Kingdom. British lawmakers appear set to revisit legalising assisted dying for terminally ill people in the new parliamentary session after Labour lawmaker Lauren Edwards said she would reintroduce draft legislation that stalled earlier this year.
Polls have long shown about 80% of Britons support assisted dying, and the country had been on course to join Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain and some U.S. states in permitting it before the bill faltered in the upper chamber.
Bill to return to House of Commons
Edwards, a member of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, said she would bring back the same legislation as a private member’s bill to the House of Commons, the lower chamber of parliament.
Writing on her website on Sunday, Edwards said she owed it to terminally ill people and their families to reintroduce a bill that gives them choice at the end of their lives.
Previous vote and Lords setback
In 2025, elected members of the House of Commons voted 314-291 in favour of changing the law, but the bill failed in the unelected House of Lords in March after members ran out of time to debate the hundreds of amendments proposed during that parliamentary session.
Edwards said an unelected minority should not be allowed to frustrate the democratic process for a second time, adding that the outcome undermined public trust in democracy because it prevented the government from implementing changes supported by a majority of voters.
What the bill proposes
Under the proposed bill, mentally competent, terminally ill adults in England and Wales with six months or fewer to live would be given the right to end their lives with medical help, subject to approval from a panel of professionals.
Concerns over safeguards
Some members of the House of Lords raised concerns about whether the bill could adequately protect vulnerable ill people from coercion, contributing to the high number of amendments put forward.
Edwards said the proposed assisted dying law was “the safest and most robust” in the world.