MPs vote on legalising assisted dying TODAY: Politicians urged not to put vulnerable people at risk with seismic law change - but will PM vote FOR it?

MPs will vote on whether to make a seismic change to the law on assisted dying today as campaigners seek to allow medics to help people to die.
The biggest change on the law on suicide for decades is expected to take place this afternoon, with the result on a knife edge.
Kim Leadbeater is confident her plan to allow terminally ill people with six months or less to live to be helped to end their lives will pass the Commons.
But opponents of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill also believe they may have the numbers to see it off the proposed decriminalisation in England and Wales.
The legislation passed a preliminary vote last November by 55 votes. But since then more than 20 MPs who backed it have publicly changed their minds, and the Bill would fall if 28 MPs switched directly from voting yes to no on Friday.
In what will be seen as a blow to the Bill, four Labour MPs confirmed on the eve of the vote that they will switch sides to oppose the proposed new law.
Labour's Paul Foster, Jonathan Hinder, Markus Campbell-Savours and Kanishka Narayan voiced concerns about the safety of the 'drastically weakened' legislation, citing the scrapping of the High Court Judge safeguard as a key reason.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch also urged her MPs to vote against the legislation, describing it as 'a bad Bill' despite being 'previously supportive of assisted suicide'.
But questions remain over what Sir Keir Starmer will do. He backed the law change in November and reiterated his support this week, but No 10 declined to say if he would vote today.
Liverpool MP Dan Carden - the leader of the Blue Labour group - became the latest MP to say he will vote against the Bill having previously abstained.
'I genuinely fear the legislation will take us in the wrong direction,' he told the Guardian last night.
'The values of family, social bonds, responsibilities, time and community will be diminished, with isolation, atomisation and individualism winning again.'
It comes as Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster and most senior Catholic in the UK, said the Church will close Catholic hospices and care homes if MPs vote for assisted suicide.
However Dame Esther Rantzen made a plea to MPs last night, urging them to pass a Bill she said could 'transform the final days of generations in the future' and replace the current 'cruel, messy criminal law'.
The broadcaster, who is terminally ill with cancer and has been a prominent supporter of assisted dying, said: 'Please allow us terminally ill the dignity of choice over our own deaths.'
Lisa Nandy, a frontbench supporter of the bill, today suggested that if the law is pushed through today, extra safeguards could be added in the House of Lords.
In comments that could be seen as an effort to win over waverers she told Sky News: 'I hope the Bill succeeds today. If it does pass the House of Commons stages, of course it will go on to the House of Lords, where there will be more debate and there may be more changes.'
MPs will get a free vote on what is known as a 'conscience matter' with ministers Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood expected to vote No.
Shadow frontbencher Robert Jenrick also reiterated his opposition last night.
Writing for the Daily Mail, he reveals how he helped look after his grandmother, Dorothy, as a teenage boy – and how she continued to bring joy to the family as she defied a terminal diagnosis for nearly a decade.
The shadow justice secretary says the prospect of legalising assisted dying 'fills me with dread', adding: 'My Nana felt like she was a burden. I know how much she hated the indignity she felt at having to ask my Mum or us to help her with basic needs.
'People like her – and there are many such people – may consider an assisted death as another act of kindness to us. How wrong they would be.'
Ms Leadbeater has argued terminally ill people must be given choice at the end of their lives, but opponents of her Bill have warned it fails to guarantee protections for society's most vulnerable.
So close is the vote that Alliance MP Sorcha Eastwood, who was isolating with Covid, was offered a private ambulance to bring her to the Commons to vote against it. However she tested negative today and plans to make her own way in.
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.
Significant changes since it succeeded in the initial vote in Parliament include the replacement of a High Court safeguard with the expert panels, and a doubling of the implementation period to a maximum of four years for an assisted dying service to be in place should the Bill pass into law.
Making her case for a change in the law, Ms Leadbeater said: 'We have the most robust piece of legislation in the world in front of us tomorrow, and I know that many colleagues have engaged very closely with the legislation and will make their decision based on those facts and that evidence, and that cannot be disputed.
'But we need to do something, and we need to do it quickly.'
A YouGov poll of 2,003 adults in Great Britain, surveyed last month and published on Thursday, suggested public support for the Bill remains high at 73 per cent – unchanged from November.
The proportion of people who feel assisted dying should be legal in principle has risen slightly, to 75 per cent from 73 per cent in November.
Friday will be the first time the Bill has been debated and voted on in its entirety since last year's historic yes vote, when MPs supported the principle.
However opponents claim there are not enough safeguards in the legislation as it stands to protect vulnerable people.
A think tank warned hundreds of domestic abuse victims could be coerced into using assisted dying by their abusers.
The Other Half warned that victims are already at a higher risk of taking their own lives and the situation could be exacerbated.
It has estimated that as many as 631 abuse victims, who are also terminally ill, could opt to die every year within a decade, based on the Government's own calculations about the uptake of the ability to seek help to die.
A poll carried out by the women's rights think tank found that two thirds of voters, men and women, are concerned about victims being pressured into dying by their abusers.

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South Wales Argus

13 minutes ago

• South Wales Argus

MPs share their own stories as assisted dying debate continues

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 Siobhain McDonagh spoke int he assisted dying debate (House of Commons/PA) 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. What does (Sir James) think would happen in identical circumstances, if this Bill existed?' 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 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 of MPs 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?' 'And of course we couldn't, but she had very, very good care from the NHS.' Conservative MP Mark Garnier said he would back the Bill (PA) 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.' If MPs back the Bill at third reading, it will face further scrutiny in the House of Lords at a later date.

The Independent

16 minutes ago

• The Independent

What's the point of the UK talking to Tehran? More than you might think…

Europe's frantic diplomatic mission in Geneva may go down as one of its most arduous ventures on the world stage – and also one of its most consequential. The foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany must persuade a battered Iranian regime to kow-tow to the US and Israel over its nuclear ambitions, or face likely annihilation. All three European powers would, of course, love to see the back of supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei's corrupt and brutal theocracy. But they rightly fear the regime's capacity to unleash death and destruction before it goes. If Trump joins Israel in the war on Iran with US bunker-busting bombs on nuclear sites, and it succeeds in killing Khamenei, there will still be plenty of Iranian hardliners left who will be willing to fight to the death. Previous inhibitions will not apply. That could mean use of a dirty bomb in the West, or chaos unleashed in the Strait of Hormuz, through which 90 per cent of the Gulf's oil passes. For the world at large, the stakes are that high. British foreign secretary David Lammy – after meeting his US counterpart, Marco Rubio, and presidential envoy Steve Witkoff in Washington on Thursday – said that the UK was 'determined that Iran must never have a nuclear weapon". He thinks a window now exists within the next two weeks to achieve a diplomatic solution, as Trump dithers over whether to attack the regime, as US neo-cons and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu are demanding – or whether to heed the no-more-wars mantra of his Maga base. And so, in search of a diplomatic solution, Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi is meeting with his European counterparts in Switzerland. But what can be achieved? For all their good intentions – French president Emmanuel Macron said the diplomats would make a "comprehensive, diplomatic and technical offer of negotiation" to Iran – the Europeans are unlikely to persuade the Iranians to pull back from the brink. At least not on their own. While one Iranian diplomat said Tehran was willing to pursue 'a balanced and pragmatic policy in its dealings with Europe, and engage rationally with both East and West', Araghchi said there will be 'no talks' with the US over Iran's nuclear programme while the Israeli bombardment continues: 'The Americans want negotiations and have sent messages several times, but we have clearly said that there is no room for dialogue.' But there is a useful point to holding talks on neutral ground with Tehran – and it's not simply to ask them nicely and face-to-face if they wouldn't mind stopping with their nuclear enrichment programme. Rather than relaying Trump and Netanyahu's demands to Iran, Geneva is about feeding back to the White House – translating Tehran's position for the US president. The Europeans aren't there to stop the war, they're Trump-whispering for the Ayatollah. It's not clear that European diplomats have the connections they need to have a greater role to play than this, useful though it will prove. But when it comes to a practical breakthrough, some of the Gulf states might, however. Behind the scenes, figures in what some dub 'Iran's deep state' – many of them members of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – are talking to representatives of Oman and Qatar; it might be these Middle Eastern countries that can make the difference, in a second stage of dialogue. Qatar, for its part, will likely hold more sway over Washington than London or Paris. All the peacemakers, though, will be battling the plans of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Nothing less that the obliteration of the regime in Tehran will satisfy him. Worryingly, Israel's premier appears to have been joined by an increasingly pro-war Fox News, with Sean Hannity this week declaring that Iran 'is the biggest existential threat to the entire western world'. The West should have learnt by now – after the disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya – that enforced regime change in the Middle East is best avoided. Andreas Krieg, a leading Iran expert at King's College London thinks regime change in Iran would 'not be clean or peaceful'. If the current theocracy falls, there is no significant alternative political-social structure to lead this country of 92 million into the light. The IRGC, a ruthless military-industrial complex, would not easily cede control of the Iranian economy. Instead, with 190,000 personnel and a similar number of Basij paramilitaries to call on, it might well create a military dictatorship. The West and Israel would be back to square one. And the Iranian people would be no better off. Ironically, the last time the West brought about regime change in Iran – by booting out, in 1953, the democratically elected premier Mohammad Mosaddegh (for which we have British Petroleum and the CIA to thank) – it laid the groundwork for the emergence of the current Islamic Republic in the 1970s. In between rounds of golf, as he ponders his next steps in the Middle East, you can't help wishing Potus would be shown – by Lammy or anyone else – the relevant pages of a history book. It is within the president's power to unleash hell – or stop history repeating itself. After the Geneva talks, let's hope he listens to what the Trump-whisperers tell him.

BBC News

22 minutes ago

• BBC News

UK preparing to charter flights from Israel, David Lammy says

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