Private members' bills

What are private members’ bills?

Private members’ bills (PMBs) are bills introduced by MPs and peers who are not government ministers. Parliamentary time is largely controlled by the government and almost all legislation is introduced by ministers, but PMBs provide an opportunity for backbenchers from all parties to pass their own legislation.

There are three categories of PMBs in the House of Commons:

• The top 20 MPs drawn in a lottery held at the start of each session can introduce a ballot bill. 
• MPs may apply for leave to introduce a bill and speak in its favour for 10 minutes – these are known as ten minute rule bills as the MP bringing in the bill (and one MP wishing to object) may make their case for 10 minutes.
• Any MP may introduce a presentation bill after giving notice, but no debate can take place.

PMBs are also introduced in the House of Lords, which, like the Commons, runs a ballot system from which 25 bills are selected. Once these Lords ballot bills have been introduced, peers may submit additional bills for consideration. Lords private members’ bills rarely make it into law, however, as other PMBs usually take precedence in the Commons.

Some private members’ bills are drafted by government departments and given out to backbench MPs who are successful in the ballot – these are known as ‘handout bills’. Handout bills allow the government to pass minor measures which it would not otherwise get time for, and provide backbench MPs with a bill that they know the government will support.

PMBs cannot be introduced if the main aim of the bill is to create new taxes or increase public spending – only ministers may introduce such bills.

How are private members’ bills passed?

PMBs must go through the same legislative process as government bills, including passage through both houses and royal assent.

In the Commons, government business usually takes precedence, with PMBs only usually considered on Fridays. There are normally 13 sitting Fridays set aside for this purpose. In 2019 however, MPs twice voted to give precedence to PMBs on days usually reserved for government time, instead using this time to debate and pass two acts designed to prevent a no-deal Brexit.

The first seven sitting Fridays in a session are usually given over to the second reading of bills (a debate on the principle of the bill). Bills which pass second reading are then referred to a public bill committee. Unlike for government bills, only one committee at a time scrutinises PMBs (unless ministers decide otherwise), with other PMBs forced to wait their turn. ¹¹ House of Commons, Standing Orders: Public Business, no. 84A(5)  This bill committee may not usually call witnesses (again, unlike a government bill) and there is no deadline by which the committee must report.

From the eighth sitting Friday, precedence in the Commons is given to those bills which have made the most progress: those which have been returned from the Lords with amendments (which are usually quickly resolved), those awaiting a third reading (a final vote on the bill) and those reported from committee.

Once all the Commons stages are complete, PMBs go to the Lords for scrutiny, where the bill goes through similar stages, albeit with different timings.

What might prevent a PMB from progressing?

Time limits are not placed on speeches on private members’ bills, making it possible for an opponent of a bill to talk until time has run out. If a PMB is still being debated at the end of the main parliamentary business on a sitting Friday, it must be postponed to another future day (and is unlikely, in practice, to be debated again). Supporters of the bill may counteract these attempts by proposing a ‘closure motion’ to stop the debate and make a decision on the bill, but this requires the support of 100 MPs (and there are rarely this many members in attendance on a sitting Friday).

Bills not yet debated at the end of main business may still pass, but only if no MP objects. Controversially, Sir Christopher Chope objected to the passage of a bill to criminalise upskirting in 2018 ¹² Walker, P., ‘Tory MP Christopher Chope blocks progress of upskirting bill’, The Guardian, 15 June 2018, retrieved 11 October 2024, www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/15/tory-mp-christopher-chope-blocks-progress-of-upskirting-bill.  – the government subsequently introduced its own legislation. While still rare, an increasing number of bills pass second reading in this way, owing to controversy around objections and a decreasing tendency for government whips to object to every undebated PMB.

Bills may be blocked from progressing even after receiving a second reading, particularly if they lack government support. Bills involving new public spending require a ‘money resolution’ at committee stage – which only the government can move – and this can act as a government veto on particular PMBs. 

While PMBs are often defeated by procedural blocks, it is comparatively rare for them to be defeated through a vote: only one PMB – the Hunting Trophies Bill – faced a division at second reading in the last parliament.

How many private members’ bills are introduced each session?

A very large number of private members’ bills are introduced during each session. 

The number of PMBs introduced has risen over time, even after adjusting for differences in session length. Whereas an average of 0.6 bills per sitting day were introduced in the Commons in 1997–98 that figure had risen to 1.7 by 2023–24.

How frequently are private members’ bills passed?

Of the more than 2,500 PMBs introduced between 2010–24, just 110 have received royal assent and only a small proportion are even debated – a consequence of the enormous number introduced each year. Since 2010, only a quarter of PMBs have even had a second reading debate scheduled – and, because of a lack of parliamentary time, many of those scheduled lower down the running order would not have been reached.

However, once a PMB overcomes the initial challenge of receiving a second reading, the chance of it receiving royal assent increases dramatically. Between 2010 and 2024, more than half of bills which received a second reading and secured a date for committee in their first house made it onto the statute books. Just 15 bills fell in the second house after securing a second reading.

The chance of a PMB making it into law varies considerably depending on the type of bill. Three-quarters of those passed between 2010 and 2024 were introduced by MPs who had been successful in the Commons ballot. By contrast, just five ten minute rule bills and five Lords PMBs have been passed in the last 14 years.

How frequently are major social reforms passed through the private members’ process?

Assisted dying would not be the first social reform to be introduced by a PMB. A wave of social reforms passed through parliament in the 1960s under the private members’ system. This included:

• The temporary abolition of the death penalty in Great Britain in 1965 (made permanent in 1969)
• The legalisation of abortion in Great Britain in 1967
• The decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales in 1967

In total, 172 private members’ bills received royal assent in that decade, exceeding the 71 passed under the 1997–2010 Labour government or the 110 under 14 years of Conservative-led rule. ¹⁵ Brazier A and Fox R, ‘Enhancing the Backbench MP's Role As a Legislator: The Case for Urgent Reform of Private Members Bills’, Parliamentary Affairs 63/1 (2010)  

Fewer major social reforms have been achieved directly using PMBs in the intervening decades, with most successful bills touching on narrower social injustices or upon technical or regulatory matters. For instance, Tim Loughton’s Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration etc) Act 2019, which legalised civil partnerships for heterosexual couples.

Instead, as the Hansard Society have noted, private members’ bills are often used to make the case for legislative change in the hope of influencing government policy. Alex Brazier and Ruth Fox have linked this change to a growing willingness on the part of government to address contentious social issues through free votes in government time, ¹⁶ Brazier A and Fox R, ‘Enhancing the Backbench MP's Role As a Legislator: The Case for Urgent Reform of Private Members Bills’, Parliamentary Affairs 63/1 (2010)  a technique used to secure the passage of same-sex marriage legislation in the early 2010s.