In a 330-275 vote, the UK Parliament advanced the highly controversial “Assisted Dying Bill” that allows doctors to euthanize their patients under certain conditions to a third reading.
The outcome of the vote was unclear beforehand, as the Bill was highly contested and faced opposition across party lines. The vote was considered a matter of conscience, meaning that MPs were not expected to vote alongside their party’s position. Former Conservative leader Rishi Sunak voted for the measure whereas the new leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch, voted against it.
The Bill, first introduced by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, allows adults who are estimated to have less than six months to live the option to kill themselves with the help of doctors. According to the proposed legislation, two doctors and one judge need to approve each case.
The Bill will now move on to a third reading—the committee and report stages—where it will be further scrutinized by both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The Bill, with any possible amendments added during this stage, will then be voted on again by Parliament. This process will not begin before April 2025.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting from the governing left-wing Labour Party said beforehand that he would vote against the Bill because the UK’s end-of-life care was not formidable enough to support it. According to the parliamentary record, Prime Minister Keir Starmer voted in favor of the bill.
During the debate leading up to the vote, Conservative MP Danny Kruger said that disenfranchised people need to be protected from euthanasia and that Parliament needs to be their safeguard.
“We are the people who protect the most vulnerable in society from harm, and yet we stand on the brink of abandoning that role,” Kruger stated. “The Rubicon was a very small stream, Mr. Speaker, but on the other side lies a very different world, a worse world with a very different idea of human value: the idea that our individual worth lies in our utility, valuable only for so long as we are useful – not a burden, not a cost, not making a mess.”
Sir Edward Leigh, another Conservative MP, said during the debate: “I was really very struck by the comment which was made earlier … that we can’t consider this just in terms of individual hard cases, but in terms of society as a whole. What sort of society are we? Are we a society that loves life, that loves our NHS, that loves caring, that loves the hospice movement? Or are we a society which believes that there is despair? So I will be voting for hope at 230, and I will be voting against this bill.”
Showing that the bill was opposed across party lines, Labour MP Florence Eshalomi also gave an impassioned speech against the proposed legislation.
“Put simply, Madam Deputy Speaker, we should be helping people to live comfortable, pain free lives on their own terms, before we think about making it easier for them to die,” Eshalomi said.