Looking back through past Sessions, it becomes more difficult to find a precedent because of problems accessing comparative data. Older legislative records are often inaccessible and where it exists the data is inconsistent. The House of Lords publishes Public Bill Statistics for each Session but reports only the total number of amendments tabled across Committee, Report and Third Reading. It does not break down the data by stage. In practice, it is therefore difficult (and too resource intensive) to look back at bills beyond the last twenty years with any certainty about the accuracy of the data.

Nevertheless, as set out in Table 3 below, the statistics that are readily available show that since 2005, only seven bills have had more amendments across all three stages than the assisted dying bill had already accumulated (970 amendments) by its first Committee Stage sitting.

Of these seven bills, the most recent is the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill which was presented to Parliament in the 2022-2023 Session. The relevant bill page on the parliamentary website reveals that only 735 of the amendments to this Bill were tabled at Committee Stage – far fewer than for the assisted dying bill – suggesting that the current total for the latter is therefore unprecedented for at least 13 years since the 2010-2012 Session. However, for the other six bills in the list, all of them pre-dating the end of the 2010-2012 Session, comparative data is not available on the parliamentary website.

An alternative approach is to look at the number of amendments on the first marshalled list produced for each bill’s Report Stage, which offers a minimum count of amendments considered at that Stage. Subtracting that from the total across all three stages yields a theoretical maximum possible number of amendments that could have been considered at Committee Stage.

Using this method, it is clear that three of the six other bills saw fewer amendments tabled at Committee Stage than the assisted dying bill.

• Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill: 310 amendments appear on the first marshalled list at Report Stage which means no more than 839 amendments could have been tabled at Committee;

• Marine and Coastal Access Bill: 129 amendments appear on the first marshalled list at Report Stage which means no more than 1,028 amendments could have been tabled at Committee; and

• Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill: 257 amendments appear on the first marshalled list at Report Stage which means no more than 826 amendments could have been tabled at Committee.

This leaves only three of the six bills as potential comparators: the Health and Social Care Bill, the Localism Bill and the Companies Bill. By analysing the Committee Stage marshalled lists, it is possible to calculate the total number of amendments tabled at Committee Stage for two of these three bills.

• Health and Social Care Bill: 1,034 amendments

• Localism Bill: 978 amendments

Both fall short of the assisted dying Bill’s current total number of amendments.

The only bill in the past twenty years likely to have had a similar number of Committee Stage amendments is therefore the 2005-2006 Companies Bill. Its marshalled lists are not publicly accessible, but the House of Lords Annual Report for that year indicates that 1,224 amendments were tabled at Committee Stage – more than the current total for the assisted dying bill. Indeed, the volume of amendments to the Companies Bill was so great, that a Minister reportedly remarked that it “caused the collapse of the traditional methodology used by the Public Bill Office for numbering amendments”.

It is important to note, however, that the Companies Bill contained 885 clauses when introduced to the Lords – 15 times as many as the 59 clauses in the assisted dying bill.

Taken together, the evidence suggests that no bill has attracted this many amendments for almost 20 years – nothing comparable since the 2005-2006 Companies Bill. And with only one Committee Stage sitting completed, the assisted dying bill could yet set a new benchmark if Peers table just over 153 more amendments.