Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) BillFootnote 1 ground slowly through its committee stage in the Lords; over 1,000 amendments were tabled, and the timetable for reporting the Bill was extended to 24 April.Footnote 2 In a statement during his January visit to China, the Prime Minister reiterated that the Government would remain neutral on the Bill.
Given that the end of the current Parliamentary year was expected in May, in view of the number of remaining amendments still to be debated it looked highly unlikely that the Bill would emerge from the Lords committee stage.
Church Measures
In December, Royal Assent was given to the Armed Forces Chaplains (Licensing) Measure 2025Footnote 3 (‘A Measure … to make provision for licensing Armed Forces chaplains to exercise their ministry, in that capacity, at any place in the province of Canterbury or York’) and the Abuse Redress Measure 2025Footnote 4 (‘A Measure … to create entitlements to redress in connection with certain persons who suffered abuse; to establish a fund for awards of redress; and for connected purposes’).
Following the Ecclesiastical Committee’s recommended alterations to the Clergy Conduct Measure, it was expected that General Synod would be asked to consider amendments proposed by the Synod Legislative Committee in February. If successful, the Measure would then return to Parliament’s Ecclesiastical Committee for further consideration and, hopefully, Royal Assent.
Charities and the advancement of religion
On 26 November, in reply to an Oral Question from Baroness Burt of Solihull about ensuring that ‘charities cannot use “the advancement of religion” charitable purpose to advance ideologies which promote misogyny, sexism or violence against women’, Baroness Twycross, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at DCMS, said that the Government
‘will consult in due course on new powers for the Charity Commission to automatically ban individuals convicted of hate crimes from serving as charity trustees or senior managers. We will also make it easier for the commission to take regulatory action against people promoting violence, terrorism or hatred’.Footnote 5
Weddings law reform
On 2 October, the Government announced in a letter to the Chair of the Law CommissionFootnote 6 that it intends to amend the law in England and Wales to move away from the current system based on the regulation of buildings to regulating officiants responsible for ceremonies. Restrictions on where weddings can take place would be removed, ‘subject to strict regulations ensuring that they remain dignified and serious’. There would also be universal rules for all weddings, to create ‘equitable, clear rules and simplify the process for getting married’ and to remove ‘the difference in treatment of humanists that was found by the High Court in the case of Harrison’.Footnote 7 The Government is to launch a public consultation early in 2026 on the detail of the reforms.
Funding for listed places of worship
On 22 January, the Government announced a series of reforms to public support for the historic built heritage, including a new Places of Worship Renewal Fund to succeed the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme.Footnote 8 At the same time, DCMS published Evaluation of the Listed Places of Worship Scheme – Final Report,Footnote 9 which concluded that ‘in most cases the grant is contributing directly to securing more repair and maintenance to listed places of worship’.
The new fund, to be administered by Historic England, will be for England only, as DCMS regards support for listed buildings as a devolved matter. The £92 million funding over four years will match the funding of the current Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme at £23 million annually and it will be supporting fewer listed places of worship – about 14,500 in England as opposed to about 21,000 in the UK as a whole. However, it is also the Government’s intention to impose VAT at 20% on repairs to listed places of worship from the beginning of the new financial year – which will immediately add to the costs of repair and maintenance works – and, because the funding is fixed, the value of the Fund will inevitably be eroded by inflation over time. At the time of writing, the precise terms on which the Places of Worship Renewal Fund will operate had not been published.
The Church of England subsequently issued a press release in which it welcomed the Government’s announcement but expressed concern that ‘the end of the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme – after more than 20 years – will mean added pressure on local fundraisers and inevitably a drain on other sources of funding’.Footnote 10
Scotland: burial and cremation law
The Burial and Cremation (Applications and Registers) (Miscellaneous Amendment) (Scotland) Regulations 2025Footnote 11 were laid in the Scottish Parliament on 24 November; they amend the Cremation (Scotland) Regulations 2019 and the Burial (Applications and Register) (Scotland) Regulations 2024. The Regulations:
i. update the burial and cremation application forms in the Burial Applications Regulations and the Cremation Regulations, with the intention of improving usability, removing guidance notes from the cremation application forms and ensuring that the forms reflect current practice; and
ii. update the cremation register requirements by removing the need for a prescribed form for the register and instead specifying the data that must be recorded.
On 3 December, the Scottish Government laid the Hydrolysis (Scotland) (No. 1) Regulations 2026Footnote 12 and the Hydrolysis (Scotland) (No. 2) Regulations 2026.Footnote 13 The Regulations will enable hydrolysis to be offered as an alternative option to burial or cremation.
If approved, both sets of Regulations will come into force on 2 March.
Scotland: proposed changes to family law
In January, the Scottish Government announced a consultation on a series of proposed changes to family law:Footnote 14
i. implementing the Scottish Law Commission’s recommendations to improve cohabitants’ rights following separation;
ii. cohabitants’ rights where their partner dies without leaving a will;
iii. whether the minimum age of marriage and civil partnership should be raised from 16 to 18, and on extending the criminal offence of forced marriage or forced civil partnership;
iv. extending the simplified divorce and dissolution procedures in Scotland to include cases where there are children under 16 and no dispute about their welfare; and
v. whether there should be qualifying requirements for religious and belief bodies with celebrants who solemnise marriages and register civil partnerships.
On the issue of the minimum age for marriage and civil partnership, the consultation notes that the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s concluding observations in 2023 on the combined 6th and 7th periodic reports on the United Kingdom recommended that the UK ‘prohibit all marriages of children under 18 years of age, without exception, in Scotland, Northern Ireland and all overseas territories and the Crown dependencies of Guernsey and the Isle of Man’. It also notes that in 2023, very few marriages in Scotland – around 0.07% (21 out of 26,753) – involved a party or parties under 18.
