Beccy Cooper MP: Thoughts on Assisted Dying

Prior to then, MPs had given the Bill the provisional assent of Parliament. So it then moved to the committee stage, where after 90 hours of scrutiny and over 600 proposed amendments, we debated it on Friday, voting through an amendment which allowed doctors to opt out of providing assisted dying if they did not wish to do so.

There were many more amendments which we didn’t have time to debate, so we’ll be addressing those on a second day of the report stage next month. We will then have a Third reading, in which we debate the Bill its entirety. And then finally vote on whether it passes into legislation and becomes law. So to put it mildly, there is still a long way to go.

Assisted dying is of course a very sensitive and complex issue and thank you to all those who have been in touch. For me, both as a doctor and an MP I am still in favour of this Bill being passed. I have read the legislation and all the amendments and listened to the committee moving through the evidence. And my position at this stage remains that the legislation is robust and puts strong safeguards in place.

We will be protecting the most vulnerable as well as allowing a very small group of people who are within six months of the end of their life, the opportunity to have choice in the way they die.

Critically however, and many of you have raised this point, the Bill does not negate the need for excellent end of life care. I will continue to fight for adequate funding for palliative care, to make sure that a good death is something that we should all be able to access.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that this is still a four-year process - the actual regulations around this bill won’t be decided until 2029. So there’s still plenty of time to strengthen safeguards even further and close any loopholes that come to light in the course of the many debates to follow.

And in that time, we’ll be bringing forward measures to reform and strengthen our health and social care provision in all its many aspects, as part of our 10-year plan for the NHS.