Bill To Legalise Assisted Dying Passes First Vote

Kim Leadbeater, British Labour Party politician and Member of Parliament

5 min read29 November

330 MPs voted in favour of the legislation on Friday afternoon, while 275 voted against it.

Its supporters included Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Chancellor Rachel Reeves and former Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak. Leader of the Opposition Kemi Badenoch voted against it, however, as did Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Health Secretary Wes Streeting.

The Bill, brought forward by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, will now move onto the next stages of the legislative process.

The result comes after weeks of debate over an issue that has crossed party lines and some MPs were seen crying in the House of Commons throughout the debate. 

The Speaker Lindsay Hoyle said this morning that 160 MPs had requested to speak during the second reading debate.

MPs were given a free vote on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, meaning they were not told to vote a certain way by their party leaders.

A number of MPs — including some supporters of the Bill — complained that they had not been given enough time to debate such consequential proposals.

Tory veteran David Davis, for example, said he would vote for the Bill today but urged the Government to create more time for scrutiny before future votes on it.

Leadbeater has said that her Bill to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults will have the “strictest protections and safeguards of any legislation anywhere in the world”.

The Government had previously suggested that it would carry out an impact assessment of the Bill later in the legislative process.

Speaking on Monday, the Prime Minister’s official spokesperson said “if the Bill progresses, it would not be unusual for the Government to assess the policy and its impacts”.

They added, however, that there had been “no change” to the position that it was a Private Members’ Bill amid suggestions that the Government could take it over.

Leadbeater said during the debate that she had heard the story of Tom, a 47-year-old who had bile duct cancer, which obstructed his bowel, “resulting in an agonizing death” as he “vomited fecal matter for five hours before he ultimately inhaled the feces and died”. 

“His family say the look of horror on his face as he died will never leave them. Lucy now has PTSD [Post-traumatic stress disorder], which is quite common for families who lose loved ones in such harrowing circumstances.”

Some such as Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell said that voting for the Bill “is about extending choice”.

Labour MP and disability rights campaigner Dr Marie Tidball said that she would be supporting the Bill, adding it was about having the option for control and that “so often control is taken away from disabled people in all sorts of circumstances”.

However, she said in the Commons that she thought it was “necessary to embed mandatory language in the Bill around the need for a code of practice on palliative care, as well as improving the regulations on training for medical practitioners”.

Tory MP Alicia Kearns said arguments that the country must wait for palliative care to improve are a “logical fallacy” because “this Bill does not prevent us from improving our palliative care system”.

“Imagine a situation where you have cancer that day by day is breaking every individual vertebrae on your body one by one. There is nothing that can take away the pain. And that is the situation in which my mother lost her life,” she said.

Many concerns about the current state of palliative care were raised during the debate today, with former Tory minister Kit Malthouse — who supported the Bill — saying that “we weren’t having [the conversation around palliative care] before this Bill came forward”.

“My concern today is if this Bill is turned down as it was in 2015, exactly the same thing will happen which is the conversation about palliative care will wither as it has done for the last eight years,” he said.

But many MPs also raised concerns over the legislation. 

Labour MP Mary Kelly Foy said that her daughter Maria lived her life with severe disabilities and health conditions and the family had been told “many times that she might have only six months to live”, only to live for 27 years.

“Crucially, Maria was non-verbal,” Foy said. 

“And I am filled with dread and fear for those other people like Maria who are non-verbal and don’t have that capacity and what might happen to others like Maria if they aren’t loved and cared for and have somebody speaking out for them.”

Labour MP Florence Eshalomi, speaking about the experience of her mother who had to fight for medical help, questioned “how can we be possibly satisfied that this Bill would deliver equality and freedom in death when we do not yet have this in life”. 

Labour MP Dame Meg Hillier, who said she would vote against the Bill, said “the time is not right now, we have not had the proper discussion about palliative care”.

“We need to make sure that this debate does not stop today but this Bill must stop today.”

Labour veteran Diane Abbott told the Commons that she was “not against legalizing assisted dying in any circumstance”, but that she had “many reservations about this Bill”. 

She said that she did not believe the safeguards were sufficient and questioned whether there was capacity in the court system. And she argued that coercion in the family context “can be about not what you say, but about what you don’t say”.

In answer to a question from Daisy Cooper, Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Leadbeater said that if the Bill passes second reading, she would bring forward a motion going beyond normal procedure to allow MPs to hear evidence about the issue.

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