Left image – Wikimedia Commons: Official portrait of Kim Leadbeater MP crop 2, 2024
Westminster MPs today voted in favour of Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill by 314 to 291. The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) voiced its “deep disappointment” and called the decision an “abdication” of MP responsibilities.
After a debate on Ms Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, MPs passed the draft law by 23 votes at Third Reading. Prime Minister Keir Starmer voted in favour. The Bill will now move on to the House of Lords.
The majority in support of assisted suicide was halved compared to the vote at Second Reading last year. SPUC stressed that the fight was not over, and it will continue to oppose the Bill at the next stage.
Responding to the vote, SPUC CEO John Deighan said: “It is incredibly disappointing that, despite the growing evidence of problems with this Bill, MPs have voted to progress it. They have abdicated their responsibility to scrutinise legislation effectively and make sure the most vulnerable are protected.
“Any move to legalise assisted suicide opens the door to coercion, abuse, and the wholesale devaluation of life itself – risks that have been well documented in countries where assisted suicide is already legal.”
If approved by the House of Lords, Ms Leadbeater’s Bill will legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales for terminally ill adults said to have less than six months to live.
Mr Deighan continued: “This Bill is already unsafe, the much-vaunted High Court safeguard was dropped in favour of a panel that doesn’t even have to talk to the patient or a concerned family who want to challenge an assisted death. MPs have even failed to close a loophole that could lead to people with eating disorders being offered a state-sponsored death.”
“These flaws are why the majority voting in favour is much smaller than in November. It is clear that this Bill faces an uphill battle, and we will fight it at every stage of the process. We call on the House of Lords to pick up the ball which the Commons have dropped and subject the Bill to the real scrutiny such a serious issue deserves and reject it.”
“Literally a matter of life or death”
Before and during the debate today, SPUC protested the Bill with other groups outside Parliament, including Christian Concern, Not Dead Yet, and Disabled People Against Cuts.
Over a hundred people turned out to voice their fears and opposition to Ms Leadbeater’s Bill.
The Sisters of Nazareth, a Catholic order of nuns, was present outside Parliament with signs that read: “Let’s care not kill.”
Speaking to the BBC, Sister Doreen Cunningham said: “How can you say whether someone is going to die within six months when doctors themselves find it hard?” The sisters said that MPs should be prioritising palliative care and not killing.
During the House of Commons debate, which lasted almost three hours, MPs from various parties spoke against the Bill, which was slammed for its lack of safeguards and its focus on killing rather than providing palliative care.
Ms Leadbeater’s fellow Labour MP Jess Asato, a vocal critic of the Bill, warned that “coercion is not a risk of this bill; it is a certainty”. She also said the victims of domestic could be among those put at risk.
She added that “there will be unintended and undesirable consequences” if the Bill is made law.
Conservative MP Dr Ben Spencer, who also slammed the protections in the Bill as “inadequate”, asked MPs: “Do we believe this harm for the vulnerable is worth it?” Dr Spencer concluded that it was not: “I say vote down this bill.”
Labour MP Diane Abbott emphasised the magnitude of the vote, calling it the “most fateful bill that we discuss this Parliament…It is literally a matter of life and death.”
Countering Ms Leadbeater’s statement that the Bill addressed injustices, Abbott said: “What could be more unjust than to lose your life because of poorly drafted legislation?”
Similarly, Labour MP Chi Onwura told MPs that “this is not your average bill” since it would allow the state to “take the life of the citizen – on request, yes – but that is still a huge change”.
Like other MPs, Onwura condemned the Bill as unworkable and “without rigour or scrutiny necessary to make assisted dying work in practice”.
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