Overview
- The bill was reintroduced to the House of Commons for a Second Reading on Friday and MPs face a very close vote that supporters say may come down to who is present.
- If enacted the law would let mentally competent adults in England and Wales with fewer than six months to live request an assisted death after approval by two doctors and an expert panel, with a four‑year roll‑out period before services begin.
- The government is officially neutral and Prime Minister Andy Burnham will abstain from the vote, leaving MPs to decide on conscience rather than along party lines.
- Medical royal colleges, disability campaigners and senior church figures have warned the bill lacks sufficient safeguards against coercion and prognostic uncertainty while campaigners and some former prosecutors argue the current criminal ban leaves many deaths unexamined.
- If MPs pass the unchanged bill it will return to the Lords for scrutiny or, if peers block it again, supporters may seek to use the rarely used Parliament Acts to bypass the Lords with the next stages then determining whether changes to palliative and social care are required before implementation.