A bill aiming to give terminally ill patients the right to die is unlikely to pass through parliament before May’s general election, after a debate in the Lords only managed to address a handful of over 150 amendments to be discussed.
The assisted dying bill, proposed by former Labour lord chancellor Lord Falconer of Thoroton, would provide “competent” adults who have less than six months to live with assistance to end their own life at their own request.
It is the latest in a number of attempts to get legislation on the matter through parliament and Falconer said he would try again with another assisted dying bill after the election.
During Friday’s debate, lords voted 180 to 107 against changing the wording of the bill from “assisted dying” to “assisted suicide”.
Lord Michael Cashman, the former EastEnders actor who sits for Labour, spoke passionately against this amendment, arguing that the two terms meant very different things. He admitted he had considered suicide when his partner died of cancer, whereas his partner had looked for ways to end his own suffering.
“To see him almost completely out of his senses because of the morphine, but still aware that he was unable to breathe, offered me clarity enough that I wanted to commit suicide and that my husband, who was dying, needed his death accelerated,” he said.
Prof Lord Robert Winston, the medical doctor and television presenter, spoke in favour of inserting the word suicide into the bill, saying that “fragile, deranged, angry and distressed” patients would feel pressure to end their lives if the bill was passed.
A proposed amendment by Lord Carlile to put restrictions on the type of doctors who could consult with a patient who wanted to end their own life was also defeated 119 to 61.
Although Lord Falconer admitted that his bill was unlikely to become law this parliament, he argued that the result of the day’s votes suggested that the majority of lords were now in favour of assisted dying: “Peers have now switched from being 60% against back in 2006 to 60% in favour today. Terminally ill people deserve choice and control at the end of life and today’s landmark vote shows the House of Lords now agrees, too.”
Sarah Wootton, the chief executive of the campaign organisation Dignity in Dying, said Falconer’s bill had progressed further than any legislation on the issue before it: “We are now debating how, not if, we change the law on assisted dying for the terminally ill.”
In November, the House of Lords voted to accept an amendment to the assisted dying bill that would require a judge in the family division of the high court to rule that a terminally ill patient with less than six months to live had made “a voluntary, clear, settled and informed” decision.
Party leaders have previously said that the issue would go to a free vote if it arrived in the Commons, meaning that MPs would be able to vote according to their consciences and against their party’s official line.
