Labour is split over assisted suicide with eight Cabinet ministers on Friday voting against reforming the law amid fears vulnerable people would be put under pressure to end their lives.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood opposed the Bill but their departments will be responsible for making it work, should it become law.
Fifteen Cabinet members voted for it but Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds were among those who voted against.
Although none spoke in the emotionally charged debate, Mr Lammy revealed his fears afterwards that legalising assisted suicide would put many people under pressure to end their lives.
He wrote on social media: ‘When a soul’s moment of departure becomes an option, something to be scheduled, so does the financial expense of keeping oneself on Earth.’
Mr Reynolds said it would mean a ‘very significant change for the NHS’, adding: ‘The details in the Bill of how people would physically end their own lives leave me with a lot of questions, including how health services would be configured to provide the lethal drugs necessary to provide it.’
Overall, 147 Labour MPs opposed the Bill while 234 backed it and 18 did not vote. Among those who spoke out against assisted suicide during the five-hour debate was Diane Abbott.
She pointed out that Parliament voted to abolish the death penalty on the basis that ‘the State should not be involved in taking a life’.Â
Labour is split over assisted suicide with eight Cabinet ministers voting against reforming the law amid fears vulnerable people would be put under pressure to end their lives
Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds was among those who voted against the proposed law
‘It was a good principle in 1969 and it remains a good principle today,’ she said.
Rachael Maskell, who worked in the NHS as a physiotherapist, said: ‘It is simply prescribing the wrong medicine. Extraordinarily, there is no critical analysis, not even an impact assessment, when such significant matters of life and death are at stake and when our broken health and justice system would be stretched even further.’
And Dame Meg Hillier raised doubts over the supposed safeguards in the Bill, pointing out: ‘We have seen many failures in the system, including contaminated blood, and whistleblowing in the NHS repeatedly shows such failures.’ And newly elected MP Jess Asato raised fears that women would be at particular risk, saying: ‘I am concerned if this Bill passes we will see people coerced, either by an abuser or by societal expectations, into ending their own lives.’
Most Labour MPs sided with backbencher Kim Leadbeater who brought the private member’s Bill.
In her opening speech she said: ‘When four former directors of public prosecutions, including the Prime Minister, two former presidents of the Supreme Court and many lawyers all agree that the law needs to change, surely we have a duty to do something about it.’
Although none spoke in the emotionally charged debate, Foreign Secretary David Lammy revealed his fears afterwards that legalising assisted suicide would put many people under pressure to end their lives
