Disabled MPs voted against assisted dying bill by two to one, records show

Twice as many disabled MPs voted against a bill that would have legalised assisted suicide in England and Wales as those that voted in favour, according to calculations by Disability News Service.

A parliamentary debate ended with 286 MPs voting against the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill at its second reading on Friday with 270 voting in favour, putting an end to months of concern across the disabled people’s movement.

The vote means that the private members’ bill will not become law, although it is certain that the well-funded assisted dying lobby will continue its efforts to introduce legislation in the future.

The bill was first introduced to parliament in autumn 2024, but it ran out of time to complete its progress through the Lords at the end of the last parliamentary session in April, and was re-introduced in this session by Labour’s Lauren Edwards.

Disability News Service (DNS) has now calculated that 26 MPs who have previously either described themselves as disabled people, or who have spoken or written of having a significant long-term health condition or impairment, voted in Friday’s debate.

Of those 26, 17 voted against the bill, and nine voted in favour. Another disabled MP, Katrina Murray, was one of the “tellers” for those opposing the bill and so her opposition to the legislation was not counted.

Among those who voted against the bill were Vicky Foxcroft, Labour’s former shadow disability minister; Marsha de Cordova, another former Labour shadow disability minister; Labour’s Jen Craft, Emma Lewell and Ashley Dalton; and Liberal Democrat Steve Darling.

Darling told DNS last year how he had changed his position on the bill largely because of concerns that “broken” social care and palliative care services could push terminally-ill people into seeking an assisted death.

Among disabled MPs who voted in favour of the bill were Labour’s Dr Marie Tidball, Nadia Whittome and Kate Osborne.

Ashley Dalton delivered one of the most significant speeches of Friday’s debate, as she spoke of her own diagnosis with stage four incurable metastatic breast cancer.

She told MPs that it was “notoriously difficult to predict” when someone who was terminally-ill would die, and that campaigners for the bill had implied that a person with a terminal illness would have “a dreadful, painful death unless they have access to assisted dying”, which was “simply not true”.

She said: “It is nothing short of irresponsible to scaremonger people like me into believing our deaths will be horrific when all the evidence suggests that, with access to good palliative care, deaths are, on the whole, gentle.

“The answer is not to terrify people and their families, it is to sort out palliative care and social care first, because none of this takes place in a vacuum.

“Until we can say that everyone who needs it has access to high-quality palliative care, we are offering nobody a choice.

“A terrible death or an assisted death is not a choice; it is a threat.”

She also said that the bill failed to mitigate against its disproportionate impact on “the poor, the old, people with disabilities, or black and minority ethnic people being disproportionately affected”.

She said: “My days may be numbered, but that does not mean that I want this chamber to rush through bad law, just so I might have a chance to see it or use it.”

Marsha de Cordova, in an intervention during the debate, said: “We have to get our palliative care and social care right, with the right investment, before we can even begin to engage in a debate about assisted death and assisted suicide.

“Does she agree that those should be our priorities, not trying to push through legislation that is flawed and not fit for purpose?”

She had earlier pointed out how a government impact assessment had highlighted the “disproportionate impact that the bill will have on black and ethnic minority communities and on disabled people”, as reported earlier this month by DNS.

Dr Marie Tidball, who co-sponsored the bill, told MPs on Friday that it “enables the terminally ill adult who chooses it to live a good death”.

She was a prominent member of the committee that examined the bill in detail during the last session of parliament, but which was repeatedly criticised by disabled people and allies over its lack of balance and fairness, and its refusal to accept vital safeguards.

Tidball insisted that measures she had requested as a committee member created “a solid foundation to enable disabled people to have a strong voice when advocating for themselves about their choices on end-of-life care and, importantly, to have a seat at the table so that they can scrutinise and monitor the implementation of this bill”.

Earlier this year, Tidball refused to do any more than offer a basic explanation for why she is taking a position that is in direct opposition to the UK disabled people’s movement and why she thinks the bill would be safe, despite her past record of fighting for disabled people’s rights, particularly during the pandemic.

She again failed to explain that opposition on Friday, claiming instead that she had spent nearly two years “thinking about death in relation to this bill” and had concluded – quoting the children’s book Charlotte’s Web: “We’re born, we live a little while, we die.”

She said: “This bill lays a counterweight alongside the government’s plans to improve the quality of and access to palliative care, to drive urgent reform on social care, and to build a new system that gives people the dignity, security and support they deserve.

“Driving quality in these areas together can and must be done contemporaneously.”

Picture: Marie Tidball (left) and Ashley Dalton