Assisted dying bill defeated: Doctors have their say during the debate

UK Parliament

By Daniel Pye and Áine Fox, Rhiannon James and Will Meakin-Durrant, PA Media

The reintroduced Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill has reached the end of the road after MPs voted against the proposed legislation at its second reading.

The bill would have allowed adults in England and Wales, with fewer than six months to live, to apply for an assisted death subject to the approval of two doctors and an expert panel.

Parties allowed MPs to vote according to their conscience on the issue, and a small majority of 17 MPs voted against assisted dying becoming law.

It was reintroduced to the Commons by the Labour MP for Rochester and Strood Lauren Edwards, after its previous attempt, by Kim Leadbeater, fell in the House of Lords. It ran out of time in the last parliamentary session after hundreds of amendments were tabled by peers.

Edwards had urged her fellow MPs to send the near-identical bill back to the Lords “so that they can finish what they started” in scrutinising the legislation.