The House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform
Committee has today published its second report on the Terminally
Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill.
This report considers the implications for delegated powers in
the Bill following amendments proposed by the Bill's sponsor in
the Lords of Thoroton. The report is available online
here.
The DPRRC scrutinises proposals in bills to delegate legislative
power from Parliament to Ministers or other bodies. Bills will
often include clauses delegating the power to make future changes
to the law through secondary legislation, limiting the level of
scrutiny Parliament can apply to those future changes.
In its reports, the DPRRC draws the attention of the House of
Lords to clauses where these delegated legislative powers are
proposed and highlights when it believes the proposed delegations
to be inappropriate. The Committee does not take a view on the
possible merits or disadvantages of any policy or change to the
law.
In today's report the Committee particularly draw the attention
of the House to clauses 37 - which deals with substances that
could legally be administered to cause death and devices for
their administration and clauses 41 and 42 – which provide for
the regulation of voluntary assisted dying services in England
and Wales.
Proposed delegated powers within these clauses would allow future
governments to use regulations to make any provision that could
be made by an Act of Parliament without being subject to the
Parliamentary scrutiny required of an Act. The Committee says
this is ‘highly inappropriate” and the provisions allowing this
should be removed from the Bill.
Whilst the report reiterates some concerns made in the
Committee's first report on the bill published in September 2025,
the Committee have also welcomed in their new report steps taken
by the Sponsor to address other concerns made in the initial
report. The Sponsor's memorandum to the Committee is enclosed in
their report as an annex.
