It’s the biggest change to social policy since abortion was legalised in 1967. No wonder, then, the debate on assisted dying led to another emotional morning in the House of Commons. Voices cracked and tears were fought back as MPs recalled loved ones who had called out on their deathbeds to be helped to end their suffering.
Labour MP Maureen Burke shared the story of her brother, David, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In the last few months of his life, he told her that if there was a pill that he could take to end his life he would take it. What David had needed, she argued, was a humane, safe and trusted process that would give him agency over his last weeks and months. Such raw emotion is rarely seen in the Commons chamber.
In the end the views of MPs such as Burke prevailed, but only narrowly: 314 votes in favour; 291 against. But it does match the wider view of the country: a YouGov poll suggested public support for the bill remained high, at 75 per cent.
But however many emotional stories were heard in Parliament, there were just as many objections. The most eloquent came from the DUP’s Gavin Robinson who voted against on religious grounds. He told of a constituent who had contemplated assisted dying but had lived longer than expected. “Medicine is the science of uncertainty and the art of probability,” he said. “There is nothing that can be determined to the point of legal certainty or, from our perspective, moral certainty.”
And the remonstrations didn’t stop at religion. A series of lawyerly MPs stood up to say the bill was fundamentally flawed and would cause more harm than it would prevent. Objectors talked about the provision of palliative care and concerns that society’s most vulnerable may be coerced into dying. They also suggested the NHS will be unable to cope.
Outside the Houses of Parliament members of the Dignity in Dying campaign wore pink and held placards in memory of friends and family members. Their opponents wore white lab coats and bloodied gloves and masks and stood alongside nuns and other religious observers.
Inside the chamber, the tone was respectful and reserved. Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat said the term “honourable friend”, usually reserved for members of his own party, applied to all MPs who were seeking the best outcome for their constituents.
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Likewise Tory MPs asked for interventions during Labour MP Diane Abbott‘s speech to give her time to find her place after her tablet went wrong, showing a respect not always mirrored outside the chamber.
Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP who sponsored the bill, has been through the wringer. All the anger at the proposed change to the law has rained down upon her head, with social media abuse that would have floored a lesser fighter.
She became an MP after her sister, Jo Cox, was murdered and only took on the bill after her name was drawn out of a ballot.
“Kim has walked through fire through this debate with an astonishing toll in terms of abuse. Being called an ‘angel of death’ in a national newspaper, when you remember who her sister is, was a low point. She’s come out of this with her head held high,” Conservative MP Kit Malthouse, who worked closely alongside Leadbeater, told The i Paper.
But support for Leadbeater was by no means a universal view in Parliament. MPs had a free vote on the bill meaning they decided according to their conscience rather than along party lines.
Even so, Leadbeater’s Labour colleagues privately expressed frustration that because it had been sponsored by a Labour MP, it meant voters thought it was a Government bill. Already angry at the changes to the winter fuel allowance, those same voters had punished Labour at the local elections in May, MPs said.
Bitter Labour MPs went from calling Leadbeater “Kim” in private conversations to simply “the sponsor”. Opponents of her plans pointed to how much Dignity in Dying had spent on Facebook ad campaigns in the last few months alone. The campaign group spent nearly £73,000 between mid-March and mid-June. They said their own campaign – run on a shoestring – simply couldn’t compete.
In Downing Street, what had seemed like an easy decision when Labour was in opposition – to allow a free vote on the matter – soon became another thorn in the side of aides to the Prime Minister, taking up ministerial time and drawing attention to the individual views of the Cabinet.
Leadbeater’s handling of the bill also drew criticism because her opponents said she weighted the scrutiny stage with expert witnesses in favour of her bill. According to Nikki da Costa, legislative advisor to former Tory Prime Minister Theresa May, “the legislative process was trying to compensate for the absence of a policy making process”.
“There was no consultation process, just oral evidence where the witness list was skewed towards advocates for assisted dying. Four hundred organisations and individuals submitted written evidence, most of it sits unread. And when the bill was looked at line-by-line, decisions on what to do on each issue and about each amendment were entirely down to one MP; Kim was clearly in charge,” da Costa told The i Paper.
The next step for the bill is the House of Lords, where it will face further scrutiny. Malthouse said he is confident the bill could receive royal assent and become law by this autumn. However, the Lords may have other ideas, and Parliament could run out of Fridays to debate it. Added to a four-year implementation period, there will likely be no assisted deaths this decade.
Earlier on Friday Leadbeater had warned the Commons her assisted dying bill “is not a choice between living and dying – it is a choice for terminally ill people about how they die”. It’s a warning a majority of them heeded.
Leadbeater will forever be associated with the monumental change and supporters will celebrate her for it. But she will spend the rest of her career justifying the changes, particularly if anything goes wrong.
Back in the Commons chamber, stunned faces greeted the outcome of the vote. No one cheered, not even the bill’s supporters. When you consider that the bill ends the suffering of people already dying, there are no real winners here.
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