\n<\/p>\n
W<\/span>hen Kim Leadbeater walked out of the chamber of the House of Commons into parliament\u2019s central lobby, she was embraced by some campaigners who did not even know if they would be alive when the vote came.<\/p>\n \u201cOverwhelmingly the sense is relief,\u201d she said. Her close colleague the Labour MP Lizzi Collinge was near to tears. For the Conservative Kit Malthouse, standing nearby, it was the culmination of a decade of campaigning within his own party. More than 20 of his colleagues \u2013 more than he expected \u2013 backed the bill.<\/p>\n But even in the voting lobbies MPs were texting each other with doubts the bill would pass, so high was the tension on both sides. When the speaker read out the numbers, Keir Starmer, a longtime supporter who has tried to stay studiously neutral, allowed himself a small smile. Some opponents, many of them veteran Labour female MPs, looked deeply shaken.<\/p>\n For Leadbeater, the vote came at a difficult time. Sunday would have been her sister Jo Cox\u2019s birthday, and last Monday was the ninth anniversary of the MP\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n In the six months since the bill was first voted on, opposition has grown more vocal. Leadbeater felt it personally when MPs who she hoped would support her have moved against the bill. And the attacks, particularly on social media, have become more personal.<\/p>\n When she voted, Leadbeater said she would think about a lay preacher with terminal cancer she met in Yorkshire \u2013 Pamela \u2013 who spoke of how she believed that the God of her own faith did not want suffering prolonged.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m fully respectful of everybody\u2019s views when it comes to their personal faith,\u201d Leadbeater said in her office, speaking to the Guardian on the evening before the vote. \u201cBut the way she spoke about her religion and how that has informed her thoughts as a dying woman, I thought was very, very powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Moment historic vote on legalising assisted dying in England and Wales passes \u2013\u00a0video <\/span><\/p>\n Leadbeater hopes the bill will get its royal assent by October, but that will be the beginning of a four-year process to implement it, overseen by Whitehall officials. Many questions remain: how it will be funded, whether the NHS will oversee it or private providers and whether it will be free at the point of use.<\/p>\n It will be implemented by the Department of Health and Social Care, although Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has told allies he will not seek to impede it. The day-to-day work will be handed over to the care minister, Stephen Kinnock, who backed it.<\/p>\n And there remain some assisted dying supporters in parliament who feel the bill is a missed opportunity, especially for those with neurological disorders such as Parkinson\u2019s who will not be eligible.<\/p>\n In the public gallery on Friday, there were rows of campaigners, many of them in tears, with one clasping their hands in prayer. There have been deep bonds formed within both sides in parliament, Leadbeater was surrounded by supporters on the party\u2019s left and right, from Jake Richards to John McDonnell.<\/p>\n In front of her were some of the bill\u2019s most active and thoughtful opponents, a group of female Labour MPs new to parliament, Jess Asato, Polly Billington and Melanie Ward. Those women each had deeply personal reasons for their opposition, such as having long careers fighting for vulnerable women and disabled people.<\/p>\n Almost all of those who spoke \u2013 for and against \u2013 talked about some of the hardest moments of their lives, deaths of parents from pancreatic cancer, a sister with brain cancer, friends dying too young.<\/p>\n Some supporters of the bill said they wished at times Leadbeater had taken a harder line. \u201cKim has tried to be too constructive with people \u2013 you can\u2019t negotiate or work with people whose sole intent is to kill the bill. And that\u2019s what\u2019s frustrating, because whatever you give them, give them an inch and they take a mile,\u201d one MP said.<\/p>\n There is still <\/strong>deep unease among advisers in No 10 about the bill\u2019s passing and, until the 11th hour, there was a live discussion over whether Starmer would abstain on the vote, especially given the Iran situation.<\/p>\n But, as some staffers acknowledge, it would have had echoes of Boris Johnson heading to Afghanistan to avoid a vote on Heathrow. The public, whatever the PM says about neutrality, will assume this is a Labour government endeavour. \u201cPerhaps there is a lesson here about not promising parliamentary time to Esther Rantzen,\u201d one quipped.<\/p>\n The prime minister himself had been deeply conscious of not wanting to appear to influence MPs. He had personally admonished Streeting for doing so before the last vote. But his very presence in the yes lobbies would always be a factor for some.<\/p>\n For some MPs, there is a feeling now that the government should take ownership of the issue, as David Cameron did on equal marriage. \u201cWhy not try and take credit for something good? A lot of people really like it,\u201d one MP said.<\/p>\n For the most passionate, the issue has dominated the last few months in parliament. But they are in the minority. For others, it was in the week of the final vote that they began to turn their minds to whether the agreed-upon safeguards were robust enough.<\/p>\n The message from opponents was that it was no longer a vote on the principle, but on the detail. \u201cFor some of us, this has been our lives for the last six months,\u201d one senior MP said. \u201cFor some colleagues, they just haven\u2019t thought about it at all and didn\u2019t engage back until this week. How do they really feel about being responsible for wrong or compelled deaths? That was the question put to them.\u201d<\/p>\n Other opponents of the bill raised concerns about the highly imperfect nature of a private member\u2019s bill, starting a bill from scratch with no heft of a Whitehall department or legislative experts.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been a shocking indictment of our process generally, MPs are suddenly realising that,\u201d said one. Leadbeater has argued to MPs that the bill has had exactly the same level of expertise and input from civil servants as any other.<\/p>\n Significant practical changes have been made to the bill since November, including the removal of approval being needed from a high court judge.<\/p>\n That was taken out on the demand of the Ministry of Justice, fearful of how it could gum up the courts even further. Now the process will include a panel of psychiatrist, social worker and senior lawyer.<\/p>\n That has been met with concern among some of those professions too. The Royal College of Psychiatrists said it feared clinicians could be tied up with those decisions, rather than helping patients navigate their depression, which might enable them to recover enough to want to live longer.<\/p>\n For some these concerns were crucial to changing their votes. The Labour MP Josh Fenton-Glynn, who previously abstained, said the safeguards were not strong enough. He said: \u201cI don\u2019t legislate for me, I legislate for everyone including those with complex disabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n Dr Simon Opher, another Labour MP, said it was clear there would be people for whom the safeguards would not be robust enough.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I realised in the process was that no matter how many safeguards were put in place, almost everyone who was against the bill were steadfast in their views.<\/p>\n For many new MPs, being part of such a defining moment of social change so early in their parliamentary careers has been intense. \u201cIt\u2019s been an incredibly emotional and at times overwhelming process to be part of, especially as a new MP,\u201d the Lib Dem MP Tom Gordon said.<\/p>\n The issue has dominated their postbags. But since November, most who spoke to the Guardian have noticed a concerted increase in those who were against the bill.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s one of the first issues in my life where I have actually seen signed petitions on paper \u2013 people who have gone door to door or passed it round a church group,\u201d one MP said.<\/p>\n In the final hours before the vote, opponents thought they were getting closer. A campaigner even offered to fund a private ambulance for the Alliance MP Sorcha Eastwood, an opponent of the bill, who had Covid and feared she would miss the vote \u2013 though she eventually tested negative. But though the majority has been slashed, it is still substantial enough to mean peers are unlikely block its progress.<\/p>\n The bill will now pass to the House of Lords where it is expected to be shepherded by the Labour peer Charlie Falconer. But it is a process that is still very unpredictable.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought the spreadsheet for us was hard,\u201d one MP backing the bill said. \u201cThat is a different level \u2013 will they turn up? Do we even know who they are?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Kim Leadbeater walked out of the chamber of the House of Commons into parliament\u2019s central lobby, she was embraced by some campaigners who did not even know if they would be alive when the vote came. \u201cOverwhelmingly the sense is relief,\u201d she said. Her close colleague the Labour MP Lizzi Collinge was near to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[140,141,1022,985,414,1020,1021,1019,139],"class_list":{"0":"post-9126","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-assisted","9":"tag-dying","10":"tag-historic","11":"tag-journey","12":"tag-mps","13":"tag-prayers","14":"tag-reflect","15":"tag-tears","16":"tag-vote"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}