Keir Starmer emerged from the Aye lobby, having voted in favour of the assisted dying bill, and made his way over to the opposition benches, to speak to Plaid Cymru’s Liz Saville Roberts. Last month he was uncharacteristically rude to her at PMQs, saying she “talks rubbish”. He’d already apologised in the chamber, but he seemed to be doing so again, in person. If it’s going to be easier for us to kill each other, it’s probably best not to have too many enemies.
Not, of course, that everyone views the legislation in those terms. Up in the gallery were a group of supporters, who sat through the whole of Friday’s debate. They didn’t seem like they were impatient to get their hands on granny’s house. At least one of them was a woman with terminal breast cancer, who simply wanted to have painless options for her final days.
The question of what it was that the chamber was actually debating hung over the whole day. Was this the start of a journey that would end with the elderly and disabled shoved briskly off the mortal coil by doctors wondering if they could clear a bed by teatime, or an overdue moment to give suffering people control over their bodies?
It was a baking hot day and the speaker hadn’t given permission to remove jackets. Many MPs were wearing summer dresses or light cotton suits, giving the occasion the slightly incongruous air of a garden party. Alec Shelbrooke, never less than immaculately turned out, was wearing a three-piece cream suit that evoked Roger Moore towards the end of his time as James Bond.
For all the speeches, the result never seemed in much doubt
The day began with votes on a series of amendments. From the off, it was clear that Kim Leadbeater, the MP sponsoring the bill, had the numbers. The amendments she wanted went through either without a vote or with a comfortable majority. The ones she didn’t like were rejected. Although this was a free vote, both sides were running their own whipping operations. As each amendment that she opposed was rejected, Leadbeater would nod with a smile of satisfaction. Her path seemed so assured that at one point the Speaker was caught out, announcing she’d won a vote before the other side had had a chance to shout its objections.
Leadbeater opened the debate by telling the chamber that “with great privilege in this job comes great responsibility”. Replying was James Cleverly, chosen because he had the best chance of swaying undecided Labour MPs. He gave a measured speech — a taste of what the Tory party might have had were it not for some too-clever manoeuvres by his supporters last year — covering the difficulty of the issue and the appeal of the other side’s arguments, and focusing on the problems with the bill that was before the House. “We can fish around for people to come up with the perfect quote to reinforce our arguments,” he said, but with “another five minutes on Wikipedia” they could always find an opposing one. Leadbeater made a face at the suggestion that this was where MPs were getting their speeches from, which was a bit much given that she’d just cited Spider-Man.
Diane Abbott spoke next. “This may be the most fateful bill that we discuss in this parliament,” she began. She was, she said, suspicious of the “panels” that will adjudicate on cases. “I would not put my life, or anyone dear to me’s life, in the hands of a panel of officials.”
Her fingers were trembling so hard at this point that she lost her place on her iPad and reached for her phone. But there too she couldn’t find her notes. For a moment it seemed she might not be able to go on, but then after seconds that felt like minutes, a Tory MP, Simon Hoare, intervened with a question, giving her time to find her place. Jessica Toale, sitting behind Abbott, took her iPad and got the speech back. And then Abbott was soaring. We’d heard a lot about choice, she said. “What choice does this bill hold for someone who all their lives has lacked agency?”
She no longer needed her notes. iPad cast aside, she was speaking with the authority of almost four decades in the job. “I came to this House to be a voice for the voiceless,” she went on. “But who could be more voiceless than someone who is in their sickbed and dying? People will lose their lives who do not need to, and they will be amongst the most marginalised in this society.”
Her colleague Daniel Francis pointed out that the bill would allow a terminally ill person to say: “I want to go now, so that my family have a larger inheritance.” Liberal Democrat Josh Babarinde replied that it would be a crime to coerce someone to end their own life. Given the inheritance tax cliff-edge created in the last Budget, Rachel Reeves might have some questions to answer.
But for all the speeches, the result never seemed in much doubt. Anyone hoping that MPs would be swayed by oratory would have been aware that many of those who were going to vote weren’t ever present. When the vote finally came, the chamber was suddenly packed. The final vote was 314 to 291, a narrower majority than at second reading.
When it was announced, there was no great reaction, neither cheers nor despair. Some of the supporters watching in the gallery wept, and Leadbeater was hugged by colleagues. Polly Billington, a leading Labour opponent of the bill, sat for a long time on the benches as the chamber emptied. Starmer, who had arrived for the vote, had disappeared again. It may well turn out, as Abbott said, to be the most consequential piece of legislation that happens under his government. He’d been present, but not really involved.
