As it became clear that MPs had voted against the assisted dying bill, campaigners who had fought for a change in the law looked broken. Standing outside the Houses of Parliament, many wearing pink caps and T-shirts with slogans such as “Give me choice over my death”, they held on to each other for comfort. Some were in tears, others stood in shocked silence.
MP Lauren Edwards, who sponsored the bill that would have allowed terminally ill adults in England and Wales with six months or less to live to seek medical assistance to end their lives, said its failure to pass was disappointing “for the many thousands of terminally ill people and their loved ones who were given hope when the Commons voted for this bill last year”.
“It is all the more heartbreaking for them because support for choice at the end of life is still as strong in parliament as it was before,” she said. “The objections raised today were not about the principle of assisted dying but about parliamentary process.”
Longtime assisted dying campaigner Esther Rantzen, who has terminal cancer and said she no longer had the strength to join supporters in Parliament Square, told the BBC: “I am sure a change in the law will come. I am deeply sad that it won’t come soon enough for many of the people who need it, it’s a tragic day.”
Her daughter Rebecca Wilcox said she was devastated about the failure of the bill, a near-identical version of one which passed through the Commons but was blocked in the Lords, after being talked out of time by a handful of peers. “I don’t think it’s a vandalism of democracy, I think it’s a demolition of democracy,” she said.
As it was declared in the Commons that the bill had been defeated by 286 votes to 270, there were some cheers, some gasps and then a brief moment of silence as MPs processed what they had just heard.
Among those who had opposed the bill there was relief, but little celebration. In a joint statement, the Labour MPs Ashley Dalton, Meg Hillier and Jess Asato called it “unsafe and unworkable”, but they understood “the deep concerns of so many people” who had campaigned for a change in the law.
Dalton played a critical role in the highly emotive debate that preceded the vote. About 70 MPs had put their names forward to speak and the chamber was almost full.
The former minister, who is undergoing chemotherapy to manage incurable stage 4 breast cancer, revealed that she had received a terminal diagnosis ahead of the second reading of the bill, but had kept it to herself.
“When you hear those words, depression, anxiety, grief, fear, shame, and guilt come in bounds. Suicide risk is highest immediately after diagnosis, and it usually falls quickly within three to six months,” she said, arguing that the bill made no provision to support that moment of transition.
“My days may be numbered,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that I want this chamber to rush through bad law just so I might have a chance to see it or use it.”
Claire Hazelgrove, the Labour MP for Filton and Bradley Stoke and a supporter of the bill, spoke movingly about her mother, who died last October after living with a rare blood cancer.
She had “loved life and laughter”, but at the end of her life she was in excruciating pain.
“She had access to good palliative care, but what we learned, the hardest of ways, is that not all pain can be palliated,” said Hazelgrove. “I will never forget seeing her writhing and screaming in pain at points for weeks.”
There were interventions from medical professionals on the green benches too. Glasgow South West MP Zubir Ahmed, a transplant surgeon and former Labour health minister, said the social and palliative care system was not ready.
“When I am asked to prognosticate as to whether someone has six months to live or not, I am as often wrong as I am right,” he told the Commons.
After it became clear the bill had been defeated, many said it had to be a catalyst for change.
“As a society we must not lose focus on the urgent need to fix the hospice funding crisis,” said Toby Porter, CEO of Hospice UK. “Opponents and supporters of the bill must now channel their energy and passion into fixing it, to ensure everyone can get the end of life care they need.”
