In February, in an earlier article on the topic, we highlighted what could, had legislation on assisted dying - Kim Leadbeater MP’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill - been passed in the last session of parliament, have been a complex technical point of the law of causation.

That Bill has now lapsed with the ending of the 2024-26 session and with the new session beginning on 13 May 2026. Ms Leadbeater had been able to introduce her bill as she was first in the previous ballot for Private Member’s Bills. The latest such ballot was held on 21 May, with Sir Desmond Swayne topping the draw of 20 successful MPs, of whom only the first seven will have parliamentary time allocated for debating their proposals.

It seems highly unlikely that Sir Desmond, a listed officer of the All-Party Pro-Life Group who voted against Ms Leadbeater’s bill, would introduce anything touching on the same topic. The areas he and the other successful MPs intend to address will become clearer when their proposals are introduced briefly on Wednesday 17 June.

It may be worth noting that several of the top seven MPs voted in favour of the assisted dying legislation in the last session. As such, they may come under significant pressure from interest groups, and parliamentary colleagues, to use their success in the ballot to revisit this topic. Should that turn out to be the case, and should any fresh legislation look likely to succeed - both of which are important caveats - the causation problem mentioned in our earlier article would need to be properly addressed in any proposals.

If assisted death is to be permitted in English law - which would obviously be a controversial development - the question of whether a decision to choose to do so breaks the chain of causation flowing from the tort which caused the claimant’s terminal condition is very clearly a matter of policy. We suggest that resolving it would be better suited to broad scrutiny by parliament (perhaps via a bill committee receiving a wide range of evidence) than in the much narrower setting of one damages claim, even if that were to be singled out as a headline test case.