‘It's the best of Parliament’: MPs vote in favour of assisted dying bill
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After months of campaigning, Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill has passed through the House of Commons. But how significant is the result?
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In brief…
- Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill has passed through the House of Commons after a majority of MPs voted in favour.
- Lewis Goodall gets reaction from Leadbeater, who says today’s result is “the best of parliament’
- The News Agents say if it becomes law, Leadbeater will “have her place in history”
What’s the story?
The assisted dying bill has passed through the House of Commons after a majority of MPs voted in favour.
330 MPs voted for Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s private members bill. 275 voted against it.
It comes after hours of emotional debate among MPs in parliament.
The bill will now go through a lengthy process before potentially becoming law, with the House of Lords and committee stages still to come.
But how significant really is this result?
What was the reaction to the result?
Speaking to Lewis Goodall in parliament after the result was announced, Leadbeater said: “It's quite overwhelming. I feel emotionally drained. But I think what we've seen today is actually the best of Parliament.
”We had, as I had hoped for, a really robust but respectful and compassionate debate.
“End of life was at the heart of the debate. But we talked about palliative care, we talked about social care, we talked about the rights of disabled people.
"Let's have those conversations. This is not just the next phase for this bill, but it's the next phase for lots of other things as well.”
Lord Faulkner, who has been in favour of the bill being debated in the House of Lords, told Lewis: “Every single view was incredibly well expressed.
"And then when the result came through, very unusually, instead of there being a great yell of pleasure from the winner, there was a sort of silence as people understood the seriousness and the gravity of the decision.”
What did MPs say during the debate?
Conservative MP Neil Shastri-Hurst, who has worked as both a surgeon and a medical barrister, voted in favour of the bill because he has previously "failed" patients, by not being able to give them "the death they deserve".
He argued that the vote is not a "binary choice" between palliative care and assisted dying, but about "having autonomy" over your body and how your life will end. Conservative MP Sir Julian Lewis said in the past he has voted against this type of bill because of "the impracticability of effective safeguarding".
He claimed there is "no prospect whatsoever of having effective safeguards against internal pressures on someone to request assisted dying or even euthanasia".
Labour MP Florence Eshalomi opposed the bill due to health inequality in the UK.
She said: "We know that black and minority ethnic disabled people have far worse health outcomes than the national average."
Eshalomi added: "We should be helping people to live comfortable pain-free lives on their own terms, before making it easier for them to die… Freedom in death is only possible if you have had freedom in life."
What’s The News Agents’ take?
“It's probably going to be the most momentous piece of legislation that gets passed in this period of Keir Starmer's Labour government,” says Jon Sopel.
But no matter what side of the debate you sit on, there was unmistakable emotion inside the Commons that struck a chord.
Jon says: “That emotion got you. I hate using the word triggering, but it was. My own mother's death, with a terminal illness – and all sorts of decisions that we couldn't make – came back.”
That’s why this has been such a “totalising” debate, Lewis argues.
He says: “It is something that everyone knows will affect everyone and everyone's family.”
Emily Maitlis says that after all those hours of impassioned debate, the chamber surprisingly descended into silence when the result was announced.
It happened “slowly and then all at once”, she says.
She adds: “It was the sense of the realisation in the chamber that they were about to fundamentally change something social in the makeup of our state, probably forever.”
And that is largely due to the role Leabeater has played, who led the charge by initiating the private members bill.
“If this legislation is passed in the end, Kim Leabeater will have her place in history,” Lewis says.
Listen in full on The News Agents.
