Are private members’ bills the best way to decide difficult issues?

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill brought private members’ bills firmly into public debate, attracting intense scrutiny of both parliament and the legislative process itself. The assisted dying bill, which ran out of time in the last session, will be brought back to parliament by Labour MP Lauren Edwards following the latest PMB ballot, meaning the private members’ bill process will soon return to the spotlight. But are PMBs the best way for parliament to debate – and potentially legislate on – difficult social issues?

Despite the high profile of the assisted dying bill, most PMBs fly under the radar. For most of the 20th century, and in recent decades, PMBs have been used primarily for narrow, technical or regulatory changes and many successful bills have been “handout bills” from the government. As Dr Daniel Gover, an academic at London’s Queen Mary University, explained, PMBs are rarely used now to deliver large, controversial reforms, with the large number of landmark social liberalisation measures in the 1960s representing an exceptional period for PMBs.

There are key differences between private member and government bills

As was the case for the assisted dying bill, PMBs are rarely successful. Of the more than 2,500 PMBs introduced between 2010 and 2024 just 110 have made it onto the statute book and only a few are even debated. This is in part due to the time available. Although PMBs pass through the same formal stages as government legislation, unlike government bills, PMBs cannot be carried over into the next session. And there are only 13 Fridays available for PMB business in a normal parliamentary session which means PMBs are at high risk of running out of time.

Luke Norbury, parliamentary counsel at the Cabinet Office, highlighted that most government legislation benefits from extensive pre-parliamentary  development undertaken by civil servants, lawyers and policy officials, whereas backbench legislation is developed without the same level of institutional support or scrutiny. Instead, much of the work falls to MPs, their small parliamentary teams and freelance or retired drafters. That said, PMBs that seem likely to be successful often do receive government assistance during their passage through Parliament. Luke described this as a “duty to the statute book” f to ensure the legislation is robust and workable. Kim Leadbeater, the MP who sponsored the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, talked about the technical support from which her bill benefited, while the government maintained a neutral position on the policy:

“The government throughout maintained a position of neutrality but actually gave us fantastic support in terms of guiding us through the process. The clerks were brilliant … the civil servants in the Department of Health and Social Care and the Ministry of Justice and indeed the amazing outstanding human beings who write legislation.”

ITN’s Paul Brand highlighted the differences between government and backbench legislation used to introduce assisted dying in other jurisdictions. Jersey’s assisted dying legislation, for example, was government-led and informed by extensive pre-legislative consultation, including a citizens’ assembly. The Isle of Man’s legislation emerged through a backbench route. Those two processes have produced different policy outcomes, including on life expectancy criteria, methods of administration and residency requirements.

Parliament’s processes remain poorly understood

A recurring theme throughout the discussion was the gap between how parliament works and how the public thinks it works. As Luke and Kim detailed, much of the most important legislative work happens behind closed doors, through drafting discussions, negotiations over amendments and scrutiny of technical detail. The public only see some parts of the process. This is true of both government and private members’ bills, but PMBs expose the issue particularly sharply because they can attract significant public attention without the certainty and momentum which virtually guarantee government bills will become law.

Kim Leadbeater reflected that many members of the public believed her bill had already become law after completing its Commons stages, despite the reality that it still needed to pass through the House of Lords. The large intake of new MPs following the 2024 election meant that many MPs were themselves getting up to speed with parliamentary procedure while navigating a high-profile PMB. Paul Brand explained that journalists also have a challenge communicating legislative procedure clearly, particularly within short broadcast formats where highly technical scrutiny is difficult to explain.

For parliamentarians, PMBs are more than a legislating tool

Given that so few PMBs become law, and many concern technical issues or take the form of handout bills, should PMBs should be reformed, retained or abolished? Daniel Gover noted that there are many existing recommendations for reforming the process, including those by the Procedure Committee, that would improve both the process itself as well as the public understanding’s of PMBs. This would include focusing the parliamentary time available for PMBs on those with the greatest chance of success. However, the panel noted that even where legislation has little chance of passing, the process itself can still have what Paul Brand described as a “campaigning benefit”, helping to shape public debate and influence future government policy. Daniel Gover cited Wera Hobhouse’s upskirting bill, which began as a private member’s bill before the government later adopted the measures in the Voyeurism (Offences) Act 2019:

“The example that I sometimes cite is Wera Hobhouse’s upskirting bill which was down on the order paper, eighth for that day. By all normal standards, this should not have been expected to be debated, let alone have gone anywhere. And indeed, it didn’t go anywhere on that day. But it allowed her to publicise the issue and then criticise the MP that objected [to it].”

The event highlighted an important tension for private members’ bills. On one hand, the process can appear an opaque and unreliable vehicle for changing the law. On the other, PMBs remain one of the few formal mechanisms through which backbench MPs can independently raise public concerns and push issues onto the national agenda. The assisted dying bill was the latest illustration of these tensions, and of many of the procedural shortcomings of the current system.