A renewed attempt to legalise assisted dying has been blocked in the House of Commons, with MPs rejecting the controversial proposal at its first major parliamentary test.
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was defeated at Second Reading by 286 votes to 270, a majority of 16.
The announcement prompted cheers in the chamber, including a shout of “good”, while several MPs embraced and raised their fists after the legislation was voted down.
The vote came after an impassioned four-and-a-half-hour Commons debate on Friday, pitting advocates of assisted dying against those warning of the potential consequences of changing the law.
Many MPs delivered emotional speeches, drawing on their own experiences and the deaths of relatives and loved ones.
Had it passed, the Bill would have enabled terminally ill adults in England and Wales, judged to have less than six months to live, to seek an assisted death.
Labour MP Lauren Edwards brought the measure back before Parliament after it failed in the previous session. Although the earlier version cleared two Commons votes, it ultimately stalled in the House of Lords.
MPs voted 286 to 270 to reject the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill at Second Reading, a majority of 16
Friday’s Commons debate saw supporters and opponents of assisted dying make deeply personal arguments based on their own experiences
Friday’s defeat came after several MPs who had previously backed the legislation switched sides and voted against it on this occasion.
They included Labour former minister Janet Daby, who revealed she had ‘nightmares about dying and death’ after she voted in favour of the Bill last year.
‘I had to wrestle with myself, knowing that I was not entirely comfortable with the decision I had made, and my conscience was not at peace, and I cannot again, in good conscience, vote for the Bill,’ she told the Commons on Friday afternoon.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage did not vote on Friday, while Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey both voted against the Bill.
Campaigners welcomed the fall of the Bill and claimed the Commons defeat meant the issue of assisted dying had been settled ‘for a generation’.
Ms Edwards had re-introduced the Bill to the Commons after taking over from its previous sponsor, Kim Leadbeater.
During Friday’s debate, she urged her fellow MPs to send the near-identical Bill back to the Lords ‘so that they can finish what they started’ in scrutinising the legislation.
But critics argued the ‘flawed’ Bill is ‘unsafe’ and told the Commons not to return it to the Lords unamended.
Mrs Badenoch warned against trying to ‘ram’ through the ‘badly drafted’ legislation.
‘It’s rushed, it’s badly drafted – and I say this as someone who is not, in principle, opposed to assisted suicide,’ the Tory leader said. ‘I think we need to be very careful about what we’re doing.
‘I don’t think our NHS is ready and I think this should be something that the Government does thoughtfully, not a private members’ Bill, let alone one which has failed before and which they’re trying to ram through with government numbers.
‘I think that’s wrong.’
Ms Edwards on Friday said MPs were being asked to consider ‘who ultimately decides the laws that govern our nations’ after the unelected Lords blocked the Bill last time round.
Opening the Second Reading debate, she said: ‘We can and we must improve both palliative care and support assisted dying.
‘We must grasp that opportunity in front of us to create a holistic end of life care system that will deliver choice and dignity for every single one of our constituents.’
She said that, because of the four-year implementation period in the Bill, assisted dying would not be available across the two nations until 2031 at the earliest.
‘We owe it to the people that we represent to find a resolution to this issue, one way or the other, within this Parliament,’ the Labour MP for Rochester and Strood added.
Dame Karen Bradley, a Conservative former minister, said previous supporters of the Bill should feel ‘no shame’ in opposing the draft new law.
‘You do not have to repudiate the vote you cast last time in order to vote differently today,’ she said.
‘You do not have to decide that assisted dying can never be right. You do not have to abandon the compassion that led you to support the principle.
‘You need only ask whether this Bill, in this form, on the evidence before us now today, is safe enough for Parliament to force into law.
‘That is today’s test and there is no shame whatsoever in concluding that the answer to a different question is different, indeed, there will be something profoundly wrong with a Parliament in which members felt bound by an earlier vote, regardless of everything they’d learned since.’
Dr Zubir Ahmed, a cancer surgeon and former health minister, told the Commons that the social and palliative care system ‘simply is not ready’ for assisted dying, adding that there can often be uncertainty in a doctor’s prognosis for terminally ill patients.
He told the chamber: ‘I have to be honest with you. When I am asked to prognosticate as to whether someone has six months to live or not, I am as often wrong as I am right.’
Ashley Dalton, another Labour former health minister, told the Commons that she herself has stage four metastatic breast cancer, which is incurable.
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She said her cancer ‘is stable’ but warned she was unsure for how long drugs would continue to work.
Ms Dalton said: ‘Palliative care professionals and oncologists tell me that, whilst they can more or less give me an indication of when I’ll die when I’m a few days or weeks off, anything beyond that is the flip of a coin.
‘The six-month prognosis in this Bill is something no one can ever be really sure of.’
Supporters of assisted dying hugged and consoled each other outside the Palace of Westminster
But opponents of the assisted dying Bill celebrated outside Parliament after the legislation was rejected
The Bill had been reintroduced by Labour MP Lauren Edwards despite its failure in the last parliamentary session when – although it passed two votes in the Commons – it fell in the Lords
Fellow Labour MP Claire Hazelgrove, a supporter of the Bill, spoke publicly for the first time about her mother’s decision to bring her late-stage terminal illness to an end ‘on her terms’.
She said the ‘harmful status quo’ meant her mother died alone in October last year, after living with a rare blood cancer for half her life and argued ‘not all pain can be palliated’.
‘For Mum, it wasn’t a choice of life or death. It was a question of what kind of death she would have,’ she told the Commons. ‘She was clear that she didn’t want a painful or undignified death. She wanted peace.
‘For us, it will always be a tremendous personal sadness that the current law meant that she couldn’t tell us her plan, and we couldn’t say goodbye to her.
‘But more importantly than that, that she couldn’t say goodbye at the end of her life, or be surrounded by her loved ones, which is what she would have wanted for her death.
‘Instead, the harmful status quo meant that Mum died alone, with photos of us around her.’
Health minister Alison McGovern was visibly emotional as she concluded Friday’s debate on the Bill as she told MPs she had heard their concerns about social care.
‘Members mentioned the hospice sector, quite rightly,’ she said.
‘We provided a £125million boost… for adult and children and young people’s hospices. But I just want to say to members, I’ve heard the points that they’ve made, and I know we have more to do.
‘And many members and friends will know that in July, I lost my own mum. So I had a very practical education in this topic, and that experience will shape how I take this work forward.’
Mr Burnham had said he would not vote on the Bill on Friday afternoon so as not to ‘unduly influence the debate’.
The PM has previously argued there is a more immediate need to fix palliative care and social care than debate the legalisation of assisted dying.
In the last parliamentary session, the assisted dying Bill passed its Third Reading in the Commons in June 2025 by a majority of 23 votes.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch had warned against trying to ‘ram’ through the ‘badly drafted’ legislation
Ashley Dalton, a Labour former health minister, told the Commons that she herself has stage four metastatic breast cancer, which is incurable
Fellow Labour MP Claire Hazelgrove, who voted for the Bill, spoke publicly for the first time about her mother’s decision to bring her late-stage terminal illness to an end ‘on her terms’
Following Friday’s vote, Alisdair Hungerford-Morgan – chief executive of Right To Life UK, a charity that opposes the introduction of assisted dying – said: ‘This is a remarkable victory for the most vulnerable in our society.
‘They deserve protection and care, not a pathway to suicide.
‘After a two-year-long national debate, the country has decided to reject assisted suicide, settling the issue for a generation.
‘Evidence from overseas shows that, had this legislation become law, countless vulnerable people nearing the end of life would have been pressured or coerced into ending their lives.’
Toby Porter, CEO of Hospice UK said: ‘We recognise that today’s vote will be deeply disappointing for those who have supported a change in the law.
‘But there is so much that can be done to improve choice at the end of life by investing in end of life care, including funding to hospices.
‘This would dramatically improve the choices available to the 150,000 people in England and Wales who currently do not receive the palliative care they need.
‘Right now nearly 60 per cent of hospices in England have made, or are considering, cuts to frontline services at a time when demand is growing. This means more and more people are going without the care and support they need.
‘While the proposed legislation on assisted dying will not progress, as a society we must not lose focus on the urgent need to fix the hospice funding crisis.
‘Opponents and supporters of the Bill must now channel their energy and passion into fixing it, to ensure everyone can get the end of life care they need.
‘The Prime Minister has recently stated the need to fix palliative care funding. His support is welcome, but his words must now be accompanied by meaningful action.’