Jewish and Muslim peers raise concerns about late Friday debates in the Lords

Jewish and Muslim peers have urged the Government not to let discussions over the assisted dying Bill drag on over concerns it could breach the Equality Act for religious and also disabled members.

Three members of the upper chamber asked the Government’s chief whip and other peers not to let the Friday sitting run past its conventional finishing time of 3pm, with Conservative peer Lord Polak citing winter Shabbat times.

Polak, who described himself as a “modern, Orthodox Jewish” member said Shabbat would begin before 4pm on Friday and start earlier on successive sittings before Christmas.

He said: “I and others will need to be ready for Shabbat and I will be in synagogue and keeping with my tradition, as the House will follow its tradition, there will be times therefore over the coming weeks that I and some others will be absent and hope that doesn’t occur when I have an amendment in my name.”

Conservative former minister Lord Ahmed of Wimbledon also raised similar concerns about the impact on Friday prayers at his mosque.

In response, Government chief whip Lord Kennedy of Southwark said: “The decision is a matter for the House, not for me… this is not a Government Bill.”

There were concerns that with 900 proposed changes to the Bill, which is making its way through the House of Lords, the debate could run into the evening.

Conservative peer Lord Shinkwin, who has rare brittle bone disease osteogenesis imperfecta, said he had assumed the sitting on Friday would end before 3pm, and had booked a flight home.

He said: “The Government is using a procedural technicality as a feeble fiddling for discrimination against me, as one of this House’s few members with a lifelong disability.”