MPs reject Assisted Dying bill

The House of commons has rejected an attempt to bring back the Assisted Dying bill which ran out of time in the House of Lords last year.

There were passionate speeches both in favour and against the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill during a debate lasting more than four-hours in the House of Commons on Friday.

The Bill was voted down by a majority of 16, after 286 MPs voted against while 270 MPs voted in favour.

It will have been extremely telling that organisations representing doctors and disabled people had expressed serious concerns about the bill.

Some of the MPs who voted against this time had voted in favour of the bill, at least in principle, on previous occasions, and said they were still in favour of the principle but had come to the conclusion that this particulasr bill was flawed.

Laying my own cards on the table, I don't think there is a perfect answer to this question. The bill was trying to make an option of release from pain available to allow some people who want the right to assisted dying, but there is a real danger that if it became law other people may feel pressured to end their lives.

Tim Shipman wrote:

"I support the principle of assisted dying but the bill was a dog’s breakfast, its advocates too arrogant to deal with the concerns of disability groups and others and as a result they lost 60 votes when it returned to the Commons.

Hard cases make bad law and all these cases are hard, but they have seldom made worse law. 

It is not enough to slag off the Lords for rejecting it. The Lords did its job in preventing a poorly written law making it to the statute book and today MPs have done the same."

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