As the assisted dying bill passed, the House of Commons fell silent

MPs crept from the chamber to consider what they would do next to improve or defeat the bill, writes Joe Murphy. And perhaps, for the second time, to pray they get it right

It was a mark of how earnestly MPs approached the assisted dying bill that, I can reveal, some of the most firmly secular members of the House of Commons stood up during the private morning prayers rather than, as some do, sitting down in order to bag a seat without taking part in a religious ceremony.

It was, quite simply, that sort of day. A day, in the words of the ancient appeal for guidance recited behind closed doors by the speaker’s chaplain, for “laying aside all private interests and prejudices” to better “improve the condition of all mankind”. A day to respect other people’s faiths. To respect other lives, and the deaths of strangers.

Prayers over, just after 9.30am, the doors opened to reveal a House that was packed like a Budget day, despite Fridays being typically reserved for backbench legislation and constituency awaydays. Some 45 minutes into the debate, I counted 35 MPs standing up at the back. Mr Speaker informed us that 160 members had asked to speak. The vote, it was said, could go either way. It was a day that speeches would really matter.

The debate was not always easy listening. We heard stories of cancer patients whose last breath was the inhalation of faecal vomit. Of a terminally ill former police officer who faced months of pain timing his suicide at 2am for when the last train was running, so as to minimise disruption to the public.

At the beginning, Labour MP Rachel Hopkins moved for the debate to be held in private, which was loudly voted down. If she feared disruption from the public gallery, she needn’t have. The onlookers above looked every bit as sober as the lawmakers below.

The floor was handed to Labour backbencher Kim Leadbeater, to move the second reading. “I know this is not easy,” she told her colleagues. “But if any of us wanted an easy life, I’m afraid we are in the wrong place.”

There is nothing of the parliamentary peacock in Leadbeater, who wore a plain dark skirt suit. Brow furrowed, she read her speech in a clear, strong voice without excess emotion. But the stories she told of people who longed for death to escape their pain were truly heart-rending.

A man called Tim found his sick wife had smashed the empty morphine bottle in an attempt to end her end-of-life pain. A man called Warwick stood over his stricken wife with a pillow but could not bring himself to accede to her wishes to use it. Lucy’s husband Tom inhaled his vomit for five hours before suffocating with a “look of terror” that left her suffering from PTSD.

Two terminally ill people – Sophie, with stage 4 lung cancer, and Nat, with brain cancer – were actually watching the debate, said Leadbeater. They simply wanted “the choice of how to die”.

Opponents of the bill intervened quickly to highlight what they saw as weaknesses, all speaking equally respectfully and thoughtfully. Labour’s Richard Burgon warned of “systematic coercion” and the risk that residents in costly care homes would feel, “I’m a burden, if I end my life now I can save my family £25,000 to £50,000.”

Conservative Mark Pritchard said the bill’s safeguards would melt away in practice. Former deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden warned of “judicial activism”, whereby the courts could expand the number eligible for assisted suicide.

Danny Kruger, the Conservative MP, led the case against the bill with a speech that began with a heartfelt admission that voting it down would carry a human cost. “I weigh heavily on my conscience the people whose lives will be prolonged beyond their wishes if I get my way,” he said.

Kruger forensically probed weaknesses in the bill’s safeguards: it allowed strangers to fill in forms on behalf of patients; and the term “medical practitioners” was too loose, potentially enabling non-doctors to push people towards early deaths. He doubted if his list of flaws could be addressed by parliament in time for backbench legislation to pass and called for more reflection time.

But Kruger appeared to antagonise some wavering MPs with his forceful tone, in particular when he talked of Canadian medics “who personally kill hundreds of patients a year in their special clinic”.

There were gasps from sections of the House, but Kruger rebuked them: “If members have a difficulty with the language I am using, then I wonder what they are doing here. This is what we are talking about.”

That was a rare moment of friction in a debate that showed the Commons at its best and that will be remembered for moments of raw, gut-wrenching emotion.

Mother of the House Diane Abbott, now 71, echoed the passion and polish of her youthful speeches by vowing to defend the “most vulnerable” from a slippery slope. Coercion of elderly or disabled people could be as unprovable as “the long meaningful pause”.

Labour MP Florence Eshalomi choked back tears as she recalled her mother suffering with sickle cell anaemia. But for her, the need was to help ill people to live “pain-free lives on their own terms” rather than make it easier for them to die. “How can we be possibly satisfied that this bill would deliver equality and freedom in death when we do not yet have this in life?”

But surely nothing could match the power of Labour’s Marie Tidball, an MP born with a congenital disability, with foreshortened arms and legs. She recalled pleading to her parents when she was six and enduring painful surgery: “I want to die, please let me die.”

Tidball called for better safeguards than the bill currently contains but added: “That moment also gave me a glimpse of how I would want to live my death, just as I have lived my life. Empowered by choices available to me.” It was a pin-drop moment.

There was silence in the chamber when the vote was announced: the bill had passed by 330 for and 275 against.

“Thank you, everybody, we are going to move on to the ferrets bill,” said the speaker, trying to lighten the mood. But no one was laughing.

The decision taken was so grave, so huge. It was giddying. MPs crept from the chamber to consider what they would do next to improve or defeat the bill. And perhaps, for the second time, to pray they get it right.