British lawmakers rejected a renewed attempt to legalize assisted suicide for terminally ill adults, after a previous bid failed earlier this year.
After an emotive debate on Friday, MPs in the House of Commons voted against the bill by 286 votes, with 270 in favor.
Lauren Edwards, an MP in Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s Labour Party, brought back the legislation to the House of Commons through a mechanism known as a Private Member’s Bill, (PMB) which allows lawmakers selected by ballot to try to introduce a law independently of the government’s agenda.
Leadbeater’s bill ran out of time in March after members of the Lords introduced more than 1,200 amendments during the scrutiny process, raising multiple safeguarding concerns about the legislation.
Supporters of the Leadbeater bill hoped the 2025 parliamentary vote in favor of it would pave the way for what would have been the UK’s biggest social change since abortion was legalized in 1967.
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Encouraging or assisting suicide is against the law in England and Wales, with a maximum jail sentence of 14 years, with the assisted bill seeking to amend the Suicide Act of 1961.
Multiple Safeguarding Concerns
The Labour government was officially neutral on the legislation, and all politicians could vote according to their conscience rather than along party lines. This was also the position taken when Starmer was prime minister, although he personally supported assisted dying.
Demonstrators take part in opposing the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill at Old Palace Yard in Westminster, London, on Nov. 29, 2024. Yui Mok/PA Wire
In June 2025, the legislation narrowly passed in the Commons by 314 votes to 291 against.
After he became prime minister in July, Burnham said the quality of care for terminally ill people should be improved before the issue of assisted dying was revisited. He said he would not vote on the bill and did not attend Friday’s debate.
Under the proposed bill, terminally ill adults with less than six months to live, and assessed as mentally competent in England and Wales would have been given the right to end their lives with medical assistance, after approval from a panel of professionals.
Some 40 lawmakers spoke during the debate, with many sharing personal experiences which had shaped their opinions on the emotive issue.
Doctors Unwilling to Participate
Edwards said that the current law that may be used to prosecute those who assisted with a suicide was “unclear.”
“They are laws that do not protect or guide those who work in our health system, laws that do not contain safeguards against the risks of coercion, laws that criminalize and traumatize families who simply want to be with their loved one at the moment of their death, and laws that four Directors of Public Prosecutions have urged need to change,” she told lawmakers.
Labour lawmaker and cancer surgeon Dr. Zubir Ahmed said there was often uncertainty around a doctor’s prognosis.
“I have to be honest with you,” he told MPs. “When I am asked to prognosticate as to whether someone has six months to live or not, I am as often wrong as I am right.”
Conservative Rebecca Smith asked Edwards whether she was aware “of the sheer number of palliative care consultants who are not prepared to take part in assisted dying,” adding that all three palliative care consultant doctors in her constituency had said they would rather leave the profession.
Alison McGovern, Minister for Health and Social Care, addressed lawmakers on behalf of the government, calling for MPs to respect each others’ often very different perspectives.
Pledging to improve end-of-life care, McGovern said the government had provided a 125 million-pound ($169 million) capital boost to hospice funding. She added that many lawmakers were aware that she lost her own mother in July, “So I had a very practical education in this topic, and that experience will shape how I take this work forward.”
Labour’s Ashley Dalton, who has been diagnosed with incurable breast cancer, said the bill does not adequately protect people with treatable depression, who also have a terminal illness.
Dalton said that a person “can be suicidal and have unmet mental health needs prior to developing a terminal illness and then ask the state to kill them, without any assessment of their psychological health, just their mental capacity.
“Mental capacity and mental health are not the same thing,” she said, echoing concerns expressed by the Royal College of Psychiatrists and other medical colleges.
MP’s Mother Ended Her Life Alone
Labour MP Claire Hazelgrove, a supporter of the bill, revealed that her mother, Ruth, ended her life alone last October, having lived with a rare blood cancer for half of her 61 years.
She told MPs that her mother had access to good palliative care, “but what we learned, the hardest of ways, is that not all pain can be palliated. I will never forget seeing her writhing and screaming in pain at points for weeks.”
Dignity in Dying campaigners gather in support of the assisted suicide bill in Westminster in London, England, on June 20, 2025. Lucy North/PA Wire
The campaign group, Dignity in Dying, which has long campaigned for assisted suicide, said the result was “a devastating setback for dying people—but this is not going away. Law change on assisted dying remains a question of when, not if.”
Andrew Copson, Chief Executive at Humanists UK, labeled the vote, “a dark day for Parliament and for our democracy.”
He said in a statement: “This vote should never have happened. The Bill passed the Commons last year. Unelected peers, backed by well-funded religious lobbyists, have derailed a compassionate reform with overwhelming public support, and those groups will now be emboldened.”
Pandora’s Box
Ross Hendry, CEO of Christian social policy group, CARE, said in a statement that MPs had voted, “to protect the most vulnerable by rejecting this dangerous and irredeemably flawed assisted suicide Bill.”
“Overseas evidence overwhelmingly shows the same story, that if you open this Pandora’s Box, the numbers of assisted suicides go up and the criterion for eligibility always gets expanded.”
Hospice UK, which is neutral on the issue of assisted dying, was one of many groups to call for improved palliative care. Its CEO Toby Porter said the campaign group had been “encouraged” throughout the debate that those on both sides were unified in saying that end-of-life care was currently not sufficient.
“We have said before that it is intolerable that anyone might choose an assisted death because of a fear that they won’t get the care they need. That fear, at present, is real, and justified,” Porter’s statement added.
As the legislation has failed to pass at its first parliamentary vote, it cannot be revived during the current legislative session, expected to run until the spring of next year. Parliament rejected a similar bill at its second reading in 2015.
