The proposed law – known as the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill – would have allowed people over the age of 18 who were expected to die within six months to be given help to end their own life, subject to certain safeguards.<\/p>\n
By bringing exactly the same legislation, Edwards is threatening to trigger rarely used powers to override peers’ objections should they refuse to pass it again.<\/p>\n
Bills usually only become law if both Houses of Parliament agree on its final wording.<\/p>\n
But the powers under the Parliament Act, which have only been used seven times in the last century, mean that if MPs pass an identical bill in two consecutive parliamentary sessions, peers cannot block it a second time. <\/p>\n
The Lords can suggest amendments which, if agreed by the Commons, would be added to the bill. But if they do not pass the bill as a whole before the end of the next session – usually in around a year’s time – the unamended bill could become law even without their approval.<\/p>\n
Opponents have previously warned that using the Parliament Act would risk creating a law out of a bill about which the Royal College of Psychiatrists, as well as a range of disability charities and hospices, have major concerns.<\/p>\n
Edwards told the BBC she was “playing by the rules” and asking the House of Lords to do the same.<\/p>\n
“Laws passed in the House of Commons are then refined by the House of Lords but they don’t have the opportunity to block them,” she said.<\/p>\n
“It’s perfectly reasonable for us to ask the House of Lords to finish the job.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The proposed law – known as the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill – would have allowed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-638890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}