Opponents of assisted dying have urged the House of Lords to give Kim Leadbeater’s Bill “the scrutiny that it needs” after MPs narrowly backed the legislation.
Ms Leadbeater’s Bill passed what could be its final Commons hurdle by 23 votes, down from the majority of 55 it secured when MPs first voted on it in November.
The Spen Valley MP declared “thank goodness” after the result while Rebecca Wilcox, daughter of campaigner Dame Esther Rantzen, said it was “wonderful” the result had come ahead of her mother’s birthday.
But opponents vowed to fight on against what they called a “deeply flawed Bill”.
A group of 27 Labour MPs who voted against the legislation said: “We were elected to represent both of those groups and are still deeply concerned about the risks in this Bill of coercion of the old and discrimination against the disabled, people with anorexia and black, Asian and minority ethnic people, who we know do not receive equitable health care.
“As the Bill moves to the House of Lords it must receive the scrutiny that it needs. Not about the principles of assisted dying but its application in this deeply flawed Bill.”
But Ms Leadbeater told the PA news agency she hoped there would be no “funny games” in the Lords, as her Bill faces further tough hurdles in the upper chamber.
She added: “I would be upset to think that anybody was playing games with such an important and such an emotional issue.”
Meanwhile, one of the leading opponents of the Bill, Conservative Danny Kruger, described its supporters as “enemies”, saying he felt “like Evelyn Waugh at the time of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939”.
In a series of tweets on Friday night, the East Wiltshire MP accused assisted dying campaigners of being “militant anti-Christians” who had failed to “engage with the detail of the Bill”.
He added: “It’s the revenge of the middle-aged against their dependents.”
Ms Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End Of Life) Bill will now proceed to the House of Lords, where it will undergo further scrutiny before becoming law, should peers decide to back the legislation.
But some peers have already spoken out against the legislation, with the Bishop of London, Dame Sarah Mullally, saying they “must oppose” the Bill as “unworkable and unsafe”.
