(Bloomberg) -- The UK House of Commons voted in favor of a landmark bill to legalize assisted dying, potentially putting England and Wales on track to a fundamental social reform that’s largely supported by the British public.
Members of Parliament voted 330 to 275 in favor of changing the law to allow terminally ill people with less than six months to live to opt to end their own lives. Two doctors and a high court judge would be required to approve the decision. The legislation will now proceed to the next Parliamentary stage, with the bill subject to further debate, amendments and votes before it becomes law.
The vote was preceded by more than four hours of debate on a highly emotive issue that’s divided lawmakers in both main parties and that drew supporters of both sides to demonstrate outside the Houses of Parliament.
The so-called private members’ bill — which isn’t government legislation — was brought before the House of Commons by backbench Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, who told the chamber on Friday it would give the terminally ill “choice, autonomy and dignity at the end of their lives,” bound by “very stringent” criteria.
“We are not talking about a choice between life or death,” she said. “We are talking about giving dying people a choice of how to die.”
It’s the first time in nine years the issue has come before the Commons, and MPs were given a free vote on the matter, meaning they didn’t have to follow party lines. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who had declined to say beforehand how he would vote because he didn’t want to exert influence on others, supported the legislation.
Opponents including Diane Abbott of Labour, the longest-serving female MP, cited the risks of people being coerced into ending their lives, as well as concerns over people with disabilities. “I don’t believe that the safeguards are sufficient,” Abbott said.
Conservative lawmaker Danny Kruger said that altering the law would “change life and death for everyone.”
“The bill will not just create a new option for a few, it will impose on every person towards the end of their life, on everyone who could be thought to be near death and their family this new reality: the option of an assisted suicide, the obligation to have a conversation,” he said.
But Leadbeater said said the legislation would not apply to the elderly, the disabled, people with mental health conditions and those with chronic health conditions — unless they are also terminally ill. She stressed there would be checks and balances at every stage of the process requiring people choosing to die to have the “mental capacity and a settled will” and to “repeatedly demonstrate” that they understand the implications of their decisions.
“No other jurisdiction in the world has those layers of safeguarding,” she said.
Moreover, she said, the bill would protect loved ones of the terminally ill from the sort of prosecution that they could face under current laws banning people from helping someone to end their life.
Marie Tidball, a Labour MP with a disability, said she had not expected to be voting for the bill, but that she would be doing so at this stage because she would “want to live my death just as I’ve lived my life, empowered by choices available to me.” She added she would like to see stronger safeguards introduced as the bill goes through parliament.
While assisted dying has substantial public backing, with surveys consistently showing support for a legal change that would give Britons an alternative to traveling overseas to clinics including Dignitas in Switzerland, divisions inside the Commons were also reflected in the streets outside, where campaigners for both sides had gathered on opposite sides of Parliament Square.
Some were holding religious placards, with biblical references stating “Thou shalt not murder.” Others were bedecked in the bright pink merchandise of the Dignity in Dying campaign.
Akua Rugg, a 78-year-old Londoner, said she became interested in the latter campaign after caring for her mother, who died at the age of 101 and saw the last few years of her life as a jail sentence as her health declined.
“She had to be hoisted in and out of her bed and it terrified her,” Rugg said of her mother. “I couldn’t control how I came into this world but I’d like to control how I leave it.”
Aaron, a 42-year-old campaigner from London aligned with Secular Pro-Life, a US organization, said he thought the bill would be a slippery slope to eventually allowing those with mental illnesses or disabilities to be legally killed. He didn’t wish to give his surname because he didn’t want his work colleagues to find out his views on the matter.
The legislation and any proposed amendments will now be scrutinized line-by-line by a specially formed committee, before going back to the wider House of Commons, where further amendments — and then the whole bill - can be proposed and voted on. Then it goes to the upper chamber, the House of Lords, for further scrutiny.
Leadbeater said she’s minded to move a motion to give the Commons bill committee the power to take oral and written evidence on assisted dying and its implications — not normal procedure for a private members’ bill. That would allow for extra scrutiny of the issue. She also promised the committee’s members would come from different parties and represent a range of views. “This is not going to happen overnight,” she said.
If the legislation does ultimately become law, it will bring England and Wales into line with about a dozen countries that permit assisted dying such as Canada and Switzerland, as well as 11 US states.
(Updates with context and comment throughout.)
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