MPs debate assisted dying before crunch parliament vote
Campaigners made last-ditch appeals outside parliament for and against assisted dying as MPs prepared for a crucial vote.
Legalisation could move a step closer for England and Wales depending on the result on Friday.
The outcome will lead to the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill either clearing the House of Commons and moving to the Lords, or falling completely – with a warning the latter could mean the issue might not return to Westminster for a decade.
Opening her debate, Bill sponsor Kim Leadbeater, said her proposed legislation is 'cogent' and 'workable', with 'one simple thread running through it – the need to correct the profound injustices of the status quo and to offer a compassionate and safe choice to terminally ill people who want to make it'.
She shared emotional stories from people she had met throughout the campaign to legalise assisted dying, both bereaved and terminally ill.
Pressed by Conservative former minister Simon Hoare on concerns raised about the Bill by some doctors and medical bodies including the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Ms Leadbeater said: 'We have different views in this House and different people in different professions have different views.'
She noted that all the royal colleges have a neutral position on assisted dying.
The relatively narrow majority of 55 from the historic yes vote in November means every vote will count on Friday.
The Bill would fall if 28 MPs switched directly from voting yes to no, but only if all other MPs voted the same way as in November, including those who abstained.
Supporters and opponents of a change in the law gathered at Westminster early on Friday, holding placards saying 'Let us choose' and 'Don't make doctors killers'.
On the eve of the vote, in what will be seen as a blow to the Bill, four Labour MPs confirmed they will switch sides to oppose the proposed new law.
Paul Foster, Jonathan Hinder, Markus Campbell-Savours and Kanishka Narayan wrote to fellow MPs to voice concerns about the safety of the proposed legislation.
They branded it 'drastically weakened', citing the scrapping of the High Court judge safeguard as a key reason.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch urged her MPs to vote against the legislation, describing it as 'a bad Bill' despite being 'previously supportive of assisted suicide'.
As it stands, the proposed legislation would allow terminally ill adults in England and Wales with fewer than six months to live to apply for an assisted death, subject to approval by two doctors and a panel featuring a social worker, senior legal figure and psychiatrist.
Ms Leadbeater has insisted the replacement of High Court judge approval with multidisciplinary panels is a strengthening of the legislation, incorporating wider expert knowledge to assess assisted dying applications.
Before confirmation of the four vote-switchers, Ms Leadbeater acknowledged she expected 'some small movement in the middle' but that she did not 'anticipate that that majority would be heavily eroded'.
She insisted her Bill is 'the most robust piece of legislation in the world' and has argued that dying people must be given choice at the end of their lives in a conversation which has seen support from high-profile figures including Dame Esther Rantzen.
MPs have a free vote on the Bill, meaning they decide according to their conscience rather than along party lines.
There is no obligation on MPs to take part in the vote, and others present on Friday could formally abstain.
Ms Leadbeater warned that choosing not to support the assisted dying Bill is 'not a neutral act', but rather 'a vote for the status quo'.
She said: 'It fills me with despair to think MPs could be here in another 10 years' time hearing the same stories.'
All eyes will be on whether Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and senior colleagues continue their support for the Bill.
Sir Keir indicated earlier this week that he had not changed his mind since voting yes last year, saying his 'position is long-standing and well-known'.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting described Ms Leadbeater's work on the proposed legislation as 'extremely helpful', but confirmed in April that he still intended to vote against it.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has voiced her continued backing of the Bill, saying she she hopes it can clear the Commons and continue its progress to becoming law.
She told Sky News she has a 'long-standing personal commitment to change the law on assisted dying with appropriate safeguards' and praised the 'very considered and respectful debate over the last few months on all sides'.
A vote must be called before 2.30pm, as per parliamentary procedure.
Friday's session began with considerations of outstanding amendments to the Bill, including one to prevent a person meeting the requirements for an assisted death 'solely as a result of voluntarily stopping eating or drinking'.
The amendment – accepted without the need for a vote – combined with existing safeguards in the Bill, would rule out people with eating disorders falling into its scope, Ms Leadbeater has said.
Another amendment, requiring ministers to report within a year of the Bill passing on how assisted dying could affect palliative care, was also approved by MPs.
Marie Curie welcomed the amendment, but warned that 'this will not on its own make the improvements needed to guarantee everyone is able to access the palliative care they need' and urged a palliative care strategy for England 'supported by a sustainable funding settlement – which puts palliative and end of life care at the heart of NHS priorities for the coming years'.
Ms Leadbeater has warned it could be a decade before legislation returns to Parliament if MPs reject her Bill on Friday.
A YouGov poll of 2,003 adults in Great Britain, surveyed last month and published on Thursday, suggested public support for the Bill remains at 73% – unchanged from November.
The proportion of people who feel assisted dying should be legal in principle has risen slightly, to 75% from 73% in November.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
44 minutes ago
- Forbes
Should We Be Worried About Bird Flu? Public Health Experts Say Yes
Battery hens sit in a chicken shed in Suffolk, England. (Photo by) You don't need me to tell you Covid-19 changed the world. While the pandemic did help expose structural inequalities and disparities, especially in the food system, the loss of life and livelihood has been one of the greatest tragedies of our lifetimes. I'm bringing this up because, if we ignore the lessons we should've learned from this pandemic, future disease outbreaks will be much, much worse. And I'm deeply concerned that, when it comes to avian flu—a.k.a. Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A (HPAI) H5N1—we're on a dangerously wrong path. This virus typically affects birds, including poultry, and there's a current outbreak that has affected close to 150 million birds and devastated farms since 2022. Also concerningly, scientists have detected the virus in mammals in recent years—including dairy cows and humans—and learned it can spread between mammals, which significantly raises the outbreak risk. And since 2024, 102 cases of avian flu and 10 deaths have been reported in humans globally, a potentially staggering fatality rate. Many of these global cases over the past year and a half—about 70—have been in the U.S., which means the world's eyes are watching. And so far, this country's response has been nearly the polar opposite of what scientists call for, which puts everyone around the world in greater danger. 'We have so many tools, but they're not being used optimally—and they're not being used optimally by choice,' says Dr. Amesh Adalja, a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an expert in global public health. 'We can change the trajectory of this if we actually take those best practices, take those tools, and use them optimally.' To be perfectly clear, there is currently no known person-to-person spread of avian flu and experts say the current public health risk is low, per the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. What this means, though, is that the time to prevent and contain this virus is right now. There's a very real possibility that avian flu could pose a greater threat in the future, and we can't be caught unprepared. The correct course of action involves vaccination, investments in public health, and global collaboration—all of which appear to be under threat given recent U.S. policy developments. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins' original plan to combat avian flu included US$100 million in research and vaccine development. But shortly after announcing it, she reversed course and told right-wing site Breitbart that vaccines were 'off the table.' Meanwhile, in May, the Trump-Vance Administration cancelled a massive contract with Moderna to develop a vaccination for humans against bird flu, and this month, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members of the advisory committee that helps develop vaccine policy and recommendations for the CDC. 'I'm optimistic that they will continue to support the development of these vaccines. It would be a crime right now to stop it,' said Scott Hensley, a virologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia who worked on an avian flu vaccine for cattle. Vaccines save lives. Just last month, early results from that experimental bird flu vaccine for cattle came back promising. The U.S. Department of Agriculture conditionally approved a vaccine for poultry this spring, and some countries, like China and France, already vaccinate poultry against H5N1. Even in humans, Finland last year became the first country to roll out bird flu vaccines among its population. Alternative courses of action, rather than vaccines, are devastating: In March, Kennedy suggested farmers 'should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds and preserve the birds that are immune to it.' This, as former Kansas state veterinarian Dr. Gail Hansen put it, is a 'terrible idea' and a 'recipe for disaster.' Dr. Adalja did not mince words. If the past year has been a trial run for how the government might respond to the actual emergence of an avian flu pandemic, he says, 'we've failed this trial run.' Optimistically, on a global level, the World Health Organization (WHO) has been taking positive steps toward international collaboration: WHO's Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System closely monitors avian and other animal influenza viruses, and in May, member states approved an agreement to better prevent, prepare for, and respond to outbreaks and learn from mistakes made at the height of the Covid pandemic. But remember, the Trump-Vance Administration pulled the U.S. out of the WHO effective in 2026, and has revoked a variety of investments in global and domestic health programs. These decisions are not abstract, Dr. Adalja says: they 'make these types of events much harder to prepare for and much harder to control.' As Covid-19 made abundantly clear, viruses don't stop at national borders. Keeping the public healthy and preparing for pandemic risks simply must be more important than politicking. And when we're heading in the wrong direction, there is a moral obligation to sound the alarm—and to illuminate a better path forward.
Yahoo
44 minutes ago
- Yahoo
MPs share their own stories as assisted dying debate continues
Had assisted dying been available previously, moments with loved ones might have been 'lost', MPs have heard. Debating the proposal to roll out assisted dying in the UK, Sir James Cleverly described losing his 'closest friend earlier this year' and said his opposition did not come from 'a position of ignorance'. The Conservative former minister said he and 'the vast majority' of lawmakers were 'sympathetic with the underlying motivation of' the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, 'which is to ease suffering in others and to try and avoid suffering where possible'. But he warned MPs not to 'sub-contract' scrutiny of the draft new law to peers, if the Bill clears the Commons after Friday's third reading debate. Backing the proposal, Conservative MP Mark Garnier said 'the time has come where we need to end suffering where suffering can be put aside, and not try to do something which is going to be super perfect and allow too many more people to suffer in the future'. He told MPs that his mother died after a 'huge amount of pain', following a diagnosis in 2012 of pancreatic cancer. Sir James, who described himself as an atheist, said: 'I've had this said to me on a number of occasions, 'if you had seen someone suffering, you would agree with this Bill'. 'Well, Mr Speaker, I have seen someone suffering – my closest friend earlier this year died painfully of oesophageal cancer and I was with him in the final weeks of his life. 'So I come at this not from a position of faith nor from a position of ignorance.' Labour MP for Mitcham and Morden Dame Siobhain McDonagh intervened in Sir James's speech and said: 'On Tuesday, it is the second anniversary of my sister's death. 'Three weeks prior to her death, we took her to hospital because she had a blood infection, and in spite of agreeing to allow her into intensive care to sort out that blood infection, the consultant decided that she shouldn't go because she had a brain tumour and she was going to die. 'She was going to die, but not at that moment. 'I'm sure Mr Speaker can understand that a very big row ensued. I won that row. 'She was made well, she came home and she died peacefully.' Asked what might have happened if assisted dying was an option, Sir James replied: 'She asks me to speculate into a set of circumstances which are personal and painful, and I suspect she and I both know that the outcome could have been very, very different, and the moments that she had with her sister, just like the moments I had with my dear friend, those moments might have been lost.' He had earlier said MPs 'were promised the gold-standard, a judicially underpinned set of protections and safeguards', which were removed when a committee scrutinised the Bill. He added: 'I've also heard where people are saying, 'well, there are problems, there are still issues, there are still concerns I have', well, 'the Lords will have their work to do'. 'But I don't think it is right and none of us should think that it is right to sub-contract our job to the other place (the House of Lords).' Mr Garnier, who is also a former minister, told the Commons he had watched 'the start of the decline for something as painful and as difficult as pancreatic cancer' after his mother's diagnosis. 'My mother wasn't frightened of dying at all,' he continued. 'My mother would talk about it and she knew that she was going to die, but she was terrified of the pain, and on many occasions she said to me and Caroline my wife, 'can we make it end?'' Mr Garnier later added: 'Contrary to this, I found myself two or three years ago going to the memorial service of one of my constituents who was a truly wonderful person, and she too had died of pancreatic cancer. 'But because she had been in Spain at the time – she spent quite a lot of time in Spain with her husband – she had the opportunity to go through the state-provided assisted dying programme that they do there. 'And I spoke to her widower – very briefly, but I spoke to him – and he was fascinating about it. He said it was an extraordinary, incredibly sad thing to have gone through, but it was something that made her suffering much less.' He said he was 'yet to be persuaded' that paving the way for assisted dying was 'a bad thing to do', and added: 'The only way I can possibly end today is by going through the 'aye' lobby.' Glasgow North East MP Maureen Burke said her brother David was aged 52 when he went to hospital with what he later learned was advanced pancreatic cancer. The Labour MP said David suffered in 'silent pain' with ever stronger painkillers before his death, and added: 'One of the last times when he still was able to speak, he called out to me from his bed and told me if there was a pill that he could take to end his life, he would very much like to take that.' The Bill would apply in England and Wales, not in Scotland where members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) are considering separate legislation, but Ms Burke said she spoke to 'ask colleagues to make sure that others don't go through' what her brother faced. If MPs back the Bill at third reading, it will face further scrutiny in the Lords at a later date.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry to publish first tranche of final report in July
The inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal that led to the wrongful convictions of hundreds of Post Office workers will publish the first tranche of its final report next month. The first volume is to focus on compensation as well as the devastating impact on the lives of victims, and will be released on July 8. Sir Wyn Williams, the retired judge who is chairing the probe, is expected to make a public statement following its publication. The inquiry was established in 2020 to ensure there was a 'public summary of the failings which occurred with the Horizon IT system at the Post Office'. It was converted into a statutory inquiry, giving its chair greater powers to compel witnesses and documents, in 2021. Widely considered one of Britain's biggest miscarriages of justice, the scandal saw subpostmasters prosecuted for stealing after faulty computer software made it seem like money was missing from their branches. Many were sent to prison, shunned by their communities, and faced financial ruin. The report will be available to read on the inquiry's website at noon, and after this it will be laid before Parliament in line with Section 26 of the Inquiries Act 2005. Core participants to the probe, which include affected subpostmasters, will receive a copy of the report in advance.
