The Schools Bill 2026

The House of Lords has repeatedly amended and pushed back against the Government’s flagship Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, creating delays and forcing the legislation into parliamentary “ping‑pong.” 

Rebel peers voted 316–165 to back a full ban on under‑16s using harmful social media platforms, rejecting the Government’s compromise. This created a major obstacle for the bill and risked it running out of parliamentary time before prorogation. Peers also passed amendments including:

• A ban on smartphones during the school day

• Mandatory allergy safety policies

• Preventing the schools adjudicator from ordering high‑performing schools to cut admission numbers

Six hundred and eighty‑eight.

That is the extraordinary number of amendments submitted by just seven members of the House of Lords to a bill intended to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill people.

In total, peers tabled more than 1,280 amendments, an avalanche so large that the bill collapsed on Friday — a rare instance of the unelected upper chamber effectively blocking legislation that had already been approved by the House of Commons.

The episode has intensified criticism of the Lords, an institution that opinion polls already portray as bloated, unaccountable, and out of step with public sentiment. Surveys consistently show that a clear majority of Britons support allowing assisted dying for those with incurable, terminal illnesses.

Lord Falconer, a former Labour minister and one of the bill’s leading advocates, condemned the tactic as “a giant filibuster.” He described the situation as “absolutely infuriating,” arguing that if the Lords simply talks without ever reaching decisions, “then what’s the point of the Lords?”

Opponents in the Lords argued that the bill was poorly drafted and did not contain enough safeguards to protect vulnerable people from possibly being pressured into an assisted death. They pointed to reservations expressed by some medical organizations, including the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Pathologists. Proposing changes is their job, they say.