Latest news with #AssistedDyingBill
The Journal
7 hours ago
- Health
- The Journal
Historic vote sees MPs back legalising assisted dying in England and Wales
ASSISTED DYING IS a step closer to being made legal in England and Wales after the proposed legislation cleared the House of Commons in a historic vote – albeit with a narrower majority. More than 300 MPs backed a Bill that would allow terminally ill adults with a life expectancy of less than six months to end their lives. Yes campaigners wept, jumped and hugged each other outside parliament as the vote result was announced, while some MPs appeared visibly emotional as they left the chamber. Others lined up to shake hands with Kim Leadbeater, the Bill's sponsor through the Commons. Kim Leadbeater has been the MP behind the assisted dying bill PA PA Last October, the Dáil voted to 'note' a report completed by the Oireachtas committee on assisted dying. That vote was not to approve recommendations in the report but rather 'take note' at the fact that the report had been completed and published. The Assisted Dying Bill was tabled by People Before Profit TD Gino Kenny in 2020. Kenny lost his seat in last year's General Election. In a post on social media today, Kenny described the Westminster vote as a 'monumental decision'. He described assisted dying as a 'profound issue that transcends politics and needs careful navigation through legislation'. He called on the Irish government to 'take note and prepare a legal framework for voluntary assisted dying'. 'Compassion and dignity has won,' he added. Meanwhile, Northern Ireland's Department of Health said it has no plans to propose new laws in the Stormont Assembly. 'In Northern Ireland, assisting or encouraging suicide or killing someone on compassionate grounds remains a criminal offence,' it adds. Commons vote Despite warnings from opponents around the safety of a Bill they argued has been rushed through, the proposed legislation has taken another step in the UK parliamentary process. MPs voted 314 to 291, majority 23, to approve Leadbeater's Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill at third reading. Advertisement This means the Bill has completed its first stages in the Commons and will move to the House of Lords for further debate and scrutiny. Both Houses must agree the final text of the Bill before it can be signed into law. Due to the four-year implementation period, it could be 2029 – potentially coinciding with the end of this Government's Parliament – before assisted dying is offered. Encouraging or assisting suicide is currently against the law in England and Wales, with a maximum jail sentence of 14 years. Supporters of assisted dying have described the current law as not being fit for purpose, with desperate terminally ill people feeling the need to end their lives in secret or go abroad to Dignitas alone, for fear loved ones will be prosecuted for helping them. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer remained supportive of the Bill, voting yes today as he had done last year. Campaigners in Parliament Square, central London, ahead of the vote PA PA Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch voted no and urged MPs to vote against the legislation. She described it as 'a bad Bill' despite being 'previously supportive of assisted suicide'. Today was the first time the Bill was debated and voted on in its entirety since last year's historic yes vote, when MPs supported the principle of assisted dying for England and Wales by a majority of 55 at second reading. Labour MP Leadbeater has argued her Bill will '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'. During an hours-long date, MPs on both sides of the issue recalled personal stories of loved ones who had died. Conservative former minister James Cleverly, who led the opposition to the Bill in the Commons, spoke of a close friend who died 'painfully' from cancer. He said he comes at the divisive issue 'not from a position of faith nor from a position of ignorance', and was driven in his opposition by 'concerns about the practicalities' of the Bill. MPs had a free vote on the Bill, meaning they decided according to their conscience rather than along party lines. 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. Public support for a change in the law remains high, according to a YouGov poll published on the eve of the vote. The survey of 2,003 adults in Britain suggested 73% of those asked last month were supportive of the Bill, while the proportion of people who feel assisted dying should be legal in principle stood at 75%.
Spectator
9 hours ago
- Politics
- Spectator
Diane Abbott's masterful Assisted Dying speech will come back to haunt us
If yours is a sentimental bent, you'll have been terrifically moved by the spectacle of Jess Phillips MP giving Kim Leadbeater a big hug after the Assisted Dying Bill was passed. Ms Leadbeater has a tendency to look agonised at the best of times. When MPs paid tribute to her in the course of the debate for her compassion, she looked as if she was on the verge of bursting into tears. Now, it'll be tears of joy – at least for her. I should right now retract all the unkind things I have ever said about Diane Abbott Quite how this reaction, and the hugs, can be elicited by a measure which will mean people can be given lethal drugs courtesy of the state is beyond me – because that's actually what it entails – but you can dignify almost anything in our politics if you designate it as being motivated by compassion. There was one contribution to the debate which will stay with me. It was made by Dr Neil Hudson, one of those Tory MPs who looks as if he'll never rouse a rabble; he was in his previous incarnation, a vet. Almost apologetically, he declared that he had been involved in participating in euthanising various animals, large and small, in that job, and while he absolutely wasn't comparing human beings with animals, he wanted to make the point that the substances and procedures were very similar to those used for humans. 'The final act,' he said, 'doesn't always go smoothly'. What a vista that conjures up. All very different from the talk in the chamber, which was all about dignity. Hudson isn't the first person to make this point. Several months ago, I talked at some length to parliament's premier palliative care practitioner, Professor Ilora Finlay. Her verdict? Assisted suicide 'was not a Hollywood death'. Not clean, not quick. Or as she observed, the length it takes actually for the drugs to work – from the experience of those countries which have euthanasia – varies enormously, from under half an hour to over a day. The debate has glossed over this kind of gritty stuff. In the Lords at least, where the bill goes to next, Finlay will have the chance of pointing out how the thing works in practice. She can also say that the agonising deaths that pro-euthanasia MPs described graphically, as a sort of clincher, during the debate are not necessary with proper palliative care. It took the daughter of a male hospice nurse, Labour's Lola McEvoy, to point out that this choice, between dying with hospice provision or without it is not universally available. Making assisted suicide a ready option will, she said, 'deprioritise good palliative care'. Masterly understatement there. It was, moreover, the odd philosophical basis of Leadbeater's speech as the bill's sponsor which was most striking. Passing over her insistence that this bill wouldn't mean more deaths (yes, Kim, we all know that everyone must die eventually, one way or another), she waxed lyrical about the way some patients could already, all by themselves, without any supervision, opt to have their life support or ventilation turned of. Yet, she suggested, MPs were making a fuss about euthanising people who did have the benefit of a supervisory panel. Look, if we can't tell the difference between not doing something (like not opting for artificial life support), and actually – and actively – giving someone drugs that would kill them, it's hard to know how to argue about these things at all. But the MPs who really undermined the cant about choice were those who talked about coercion. I should right now retract all the unkind things I have ever said about Diane Abbott, Mother of the House. She was brilliant, even though she was panicking a bit when she couldn't read her speech on her phone (go for paper!). She was utterly convincing when she dismissed witheringly the notion that, in approved cases of assisted suicide, there would have to be no police evidence of coercion. 'There wouldn't be!' she said. 'In the family the most powerful coercion is silent.' Abbott went on to observe that 'if the police can't spot coercion dealing with domestic violence, why should they spot it in assisted dying?' Her most powerful point was to look at the assembled parliamentarians and observe that every single one of them was 'confident in dealing with authority and institutions. But what about choice for all those who all their lives have lacked agency, particularly in a family situation?' That needed saying. It's one thing for Esther Rantzen to say that she'll die in a fashion of her choosing; quite another for some poor put upon individual being made to feel that they're selfishly taking up other people's time and money (if we're sinking to the level of emotional anecdote, my mother, with Parkinson's, said just that about herself). But it's the wretched Rantzens who dominate this debate, people who've never been pressurised by anyone. There was another unexpectedly brilliant contribution on coercion, Labour's Jess Asato, who works with victims of domestic abuse. She declared that coercion was 'a certainty' – it would be 'the most vulnerable people who will experience wrongful death…as a self-perceived burden'. As she pointed out, other family members will only find out about these deaths when it's too late. She warned that 'there can be no room for doubt, and no room for error'. Except there will be errors, but who'll be complaining, and how? On a Ouija board? It's been quite the week in parliament for life and death. The vote earlier this week – for Tonia Antoniazzi's amendment to allow mothers to abort unborn babies up to birth without criminal sanction – was to do with one end of the life spectrum; the victims being the foetuses who will die. Today's vote was about the end, rather than the beginning of life. But allowing doctors to give drugs to ill people to bring about their death is a similarly warped notion of choice. It's been a good week though for the hooded man with the scythe.
Powys County Times
9 hours ago
- Politics
- Powys County Times
Powys MPs support assisted dying bill as vote passes
Mid Wales MPs voted in favour of the bill to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales as the law cleared its initial stages in the House of Commons. As the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill reached its final stage in Parliament on June 20, the bill passed through the House of Commons by a narrow margin of 23 votes, ending with 314 votes in favour and 291 against. Among the MPs who voted in favour of the legislation were Mid Wales representatives, David Chadwick of the Liberal Democrats who is MP for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe, and Steve Witherden of Labour, MP for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr. Following the vote, Mr Chadwick said: 'After carefully considering the arguments on both sides, I voted in favour of the Assisted Dying Bill because I believe people with terminal illnesses deserve the right to die with dignity and control and that the legislation has the necessary safeguards to do this in a safe way. 'This was not a decision I came to lightly, and I'd like to thank all the constituents who contacted me to let me know their views on the issue, whatever side of the debate you were on. 'I have heard too many stories of families forced to watch loved ones suffer unnecessarily, and as a Liberal and someone driven by compassion, I feel the law should allow for someone to make a clear, informed, and voluntary choice at the end of their life in a dignified and humane manner. 'Throughout this process, I have been struck by the thoughtful and respectful debate on both sides, driven by compassion and deep personal conviction, and while people may disagree, we have done so and continue to do so civilly and with empathy.' Mr Witherden had already expressed support for the bill before the final vote, saying in November 2024: 'At a pre-election hustings, I made it clear that I supported changes to the law to legalise assisted dying, provided I was satisfied that safeguards against any abuse would be enshrined in the new law. 'I am aware of the opposition to the legislation and understand fears, especially from some disabled people, those with mental health conditions and groups suffering from specific diseases. "However, I believe the proposed legislation enshrines sufficient protections for such groups, ensuring their voices will not be marginalised.'
Extra.ie
10 hours ago
- Health
- Extra.ie
Assisted dying on course to become law in the UK
British MPs have voted to change the suicide law in the UK and allow terminally ill people in England and Wales, the choice to end their lives. After a bitterly contested vote in the Commons this afternoon, the motion was passed by 314 votes to 291, a majority of 23, approving Kim Leadbeaters Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) bill, which will now be handed over the the House of Lords where it will undergo further scrutiny. Both houses must agree on the ruling before the Assisted Dying Bill can become law, but even with that, it's thought it may be 2029 before assisted suicide is offered in Britain and Wales. Esther Rantzen's daughter Rebecca Wilcox (centre) celebrates with Dignity in Dying campaigners in Westminster, central London, after the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was passed in the House of Commons. Pic: Yui Mok/PA Wire This is the biggest change to the law on suicide in decades, and passed through the House of Commons today despite fears from some quarters that it could mean people may die unnecessarily. Some opposed to the ruling are warning, that the bill was 'rushed through' and could negatively affect the disabled, domestic abuse victims and people with eating disorders like anorexia. Encouraging someone to take their own life, or helping someone to do it, is against the law in the UK and carries a jail term of up to 14 years. Dignity in Dying campaigners in support of the assisted dying Bill celebrate in Westminster, central London, after the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was passed in the House of Commons. Pic: Lucy North/PA Wire The laws as they stand in the UK have come in for fierce criticism from supporters of assisted dying, who describe the current laws as 'not being fit for purpose. The organisation 'Humanists UK' who have long campaigned for the right to choose, said in a statement this afternoon 'The House of Commons has taken an historic step towards meeting the aspirations of the public, who overwhelmingly support having choice, dignity, and compassion at the end of their lives. We welcome this and now look forward to working with Lords on the legislation. 'MPs have finally recognised the fact that assisted dying is already happening in this country. People are travelling to Switzerland if they have the money and mobility to do so. Others are dying in traumatic circumstances by suicide. Many more are suffering greatly, even while receiving the best possible care. Today, we are a significant step closer to ending that unnecessary and cruel suffering and MPs should be commended for taking this step.'
ITV News
11 hours ago
- Politics
- ITV News
Watch the key moments from the Commons debate on the Assisted Dying Bill
MPs have been scrutinising the detail of the Assisted Dying Bill before casting their historic vote.
