Tight legal safeguards are needed to rule out assisted dying being advertised on TikTok in future, Parliament has heard.
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill has returned to the Commons for further debate, with an ad ban among the issues discussed.
The Bill is undergoing a second day of report stage on Friday, with various amendments being debated and possibly voted on.
Its third reading – where a vote is taken on the overall Bill – could take place next Friday.
Opening debate, Labour MP Kim Leadbeater proposed an amendment to her Bill which would impose a duty on the Government to make regulations prohibiting advertisements to promote services relating to voluntary assisted dying should the legislation pass.
She has previously said it “would feel inappropriate for this to be something which was advertised”.
Bill opponent and fellow Labour MP Paul Waugh warned of “unspecified exceptions, which could make the ban itself worthless”, adding he had put forward a tighter amendment to “strengthen the Bill on this issue and to better protect the vulnerable”.
Addressing the Commons, he said: “Advertising works because we human beings are suggestible. Prone to messaging, visual clues and hints. Older people are bombarded with adverts for everything from stairlifts to care homes.
“One person’s advert, though, is another person’s public information campaign.”
He added that unless Ms Leadbeater’s amendment is tightened to limit the exceptions to a ban, social media ads on the issue in future would be possible.
He said: “Many in this House rightly try to protect teenagers from online harms. But the online harm of an ad for a website about assisted dying shared on TikTok could be a reality without the tighter safeguards in my amendment.”
Other issues being debated on Friday include an amendment requiring the Health Secretary to publish an assessment of the availability, quality and distribution of palliative and end-of-life care one year after the Bill passing into law.
Pledging her support for the amendment, which has been tabled by Liberal Democrat Munira Wilson, Ms Leadbeater said MPs should not have to choose between supporting assisted dying or palliative care as it is not an “either/or” conversation for dying people.
She said palliative care and assisted dying “can and do work side by side to give terminally-ill patients the care and choice they deserve in their final days”, and urged MPs to support “all options available to terminally ill people”.
Ms Wilson’s amendment is supported by Marie Curie, which said it is “desperately needed as the end-of-life care system is in crisis, with huge gaps in services and a lack of NHS leadership on this vital part of our health and care system”.
One MP, who became emotional as she recalled the death of her husband who she said had been “in extreme pain” with terminal cancer, urged her colleagues to “mind our language” after words like “murder” and “killing” were used.
Liberal Democrat MP Caroline Voaden, whose husband died of oesophageal cancer, said it is “so wrong” to use such language.
She said: “This is about helping people die in a civilised way and helping their families not go through a horrendous experience of watching a loved one die in agony.”
The beginning of Friday’s session saw MPs add a new opt-out clause to the Bill.
The amendment, meaning no person including all health and social care professionals, can be obliged to take part in assisted dying had been debated and approved last month, but has now been formally added to the Bill.
The Bill passed second reading stage by a majority of 55 during a historic vote in November which saw MPs support the principle of assisted dying.
Various media reports have indicated some MPs who voted in favour last year could withdraw their support amid concerns around safeguards and how much scrutiny the proposed legislation has received, while others might switch to supporting a Bill that backers argue has been strengthened over time.
Opinion in the medical community has been divided, with the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) and Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych) expressing concern, but some MPs who are doctors are among the Bill’s strongest supporters.
Seven RCPsych members, including a former president and vice president, have written to MPs to distance themselves from their college’s concern, instead describing the current Bill as “workable, safe and compassionate” with a “clear and transparent legal framework”.
Meanwhile, the Children’s Commissioner for England has repeated her call for children’s voices to be heard in the conversation, saying their views had been “at best been sidelined, at worst written off entirely simply because they would not fall within the scope of the current scope of legislation”.
Demonstrators both for and against a change in the law once again gathered outside Parliament to make their views known on the Bill.
Disability campaigner George Fielding, representing campaign group Not Dead Yet UK, argued the Bill “risks state-sanctioned suicide” but Claire Macdonald, director of My Death, My Decision said “no-one should be forced to suffer, and the British public wants politicians to change the law on assisted dying”.
In a letter to MPs this week, Ms Leadbeater said supporters and opponents appear in agreement that “if we are to pass this legislation it should be the best and safest Bill possible”.
She added: “I’m confident it can and will be.”
As it stands, the proposed legislation would allow terminally-ill adults in England and Wales, with fewer than six months to live, to apply for an assisted death, subject to approval by two doctors and a panel featuring a social worker, senior legal figure and psychiatrist.
MPs are entitled to have a free vote on the Bill and any amendments, meaning they vote according to their conscience rather than along party lines.
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