Much of Britain has taken a huge step towards legalising assisted dying, after MPs at Westminster passed a crucial vote on a proposal to give terminally ill people in England and Wales the right to seek medical assistance ending their own lives. Scotland is due to consider its own proposal separately.
Assisted dying – the term “assisted suicide” is preferred by some opponents of the move – could now become legal in England and Wales by the middle of next year, after the vote on Friday to pass the critical second reading of a private members’ Bill from Labour MP Kim Leadbeater.
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill passed the vote in the House of Commons after an emotionally charged near-five hour debate in the chamber.
The Bill proposes to give those with six months or fewer to live the right to ask doctors for drugs to take their own lives. They would need sign-off from a high court judge and also from two doctors. The patients would also have to be capable of administering the drugs themselves.
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It was a free vote, meaning MPs could vote according to their conscience and were not whipped along party lines. This made the outcome of the vote unpredictable. MPs previously rejected a similar proposal in 2015.
The debate started at 9.30am and the bell rung for MPs to divide into the “yes” and “no” lobbies at about 2.10pm. Prime minister Keir Starmer, whose government was meant to remain neutral on the Bill, entered the chamber for the first time at 2.15pm, after he had voted.
The first indication that the proposal had passed was noticed by journalists watching from the gallery, in the minutes before the tellers announced the result. A colleague of Ms Leadbeater who had been speaking to her could be seen giving a quick thumbs up to another MP across the floor as she sat down. Then the official result was announced in the chamber.
The vote passed by 330 votes to 275, a larger margin than had been anticipated even though polls in recent weeks showed the British public was strongly in favour of the move.
The free vote, however, led to some several interesting outcomes. While it was not whipped along party lines, only 23 Tories backed the Bill. One of them was former prime minister Rishi Sunak, who said afterwards that he believed it would “prevent suffering”.
Former chancellor of the exchequer Jeremy Hunt also backed it, while the new Tory leader Kemi Badenoch opposed it because, she argued, it lacked safeguards. Mr Starmer, who backed assisted dying in the 2015, also voted for Ms Leadbeater’s proposal on Friday.
There was clear evidence of splits in the cabinet over the issue, however. Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner voted no, along with health secretary Wes Streeting, who had argued the health service needed more resources for palliative care to give patients a proper choice. Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, and the foreign secretary David Lammy also opposed it.
The margin of victory for the yes camp, although clear, may not be wide enough to prevent opponents of the plan from feeling emboldened to add in further safeguards and restrictions at committee stage and in the House of Lords. It is expected that any assisted dying system could take the health service two years to establish.
Earlier on Friday during the debate, passions ran high but tempers stayed calm. One of the most arresting contributions was made by Tory MP Kit Malthouse, a co-sponsor of Ms Leadbeater’s Bill.
“The death bed for far too many is a place of misery, torture and degradation, a rain of blood and vomit and tears,” he said. “I want this choice for my constituents, but profoundly, I want it for myself.”
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