Commons votes 286-270 to kill the new assisted dying bill

The House of Commons rejected the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on 11 September by 286 votes to 270. The majority was 16. There were gasps when the numbers were read, and cheers from opponents that supporters called misplaced. The bill will make no further progress in this session.

The text, introduced by Labour backbencher Lauren Edwards, would have let adults in England and Wales who were expected to die within six months apply for assistance to end their lives. Two doctors would have had to certify the prognosis. An expert panel would have reviewed the application. The government stayed neutral. MPs voted by conscience, not by whip.

The result reversed a two-year run of Commons majorities for a similar idea. Kim Leadbeater's earlier bill passed two Commons votes in 2024 and 2025 before it ran out of time in the House of Lords. In June this year, on a related vote, 315 MPs were in favour and 291 against. On Friday the noes held roughly steady at 286. The ayes fell by 45, to 270. That drop is the story.

Some of it was arithmetic. A group of MPs were in Ukraine and missed the division. Some of it was conversion. Janet Daby, the Labour MP for Lewisham East, told the House that after she backed the earlier bill her conscience "was not at peace" and she could not vote for this one. Campaigners against the change had spent the months since the Lords bottleneck arguing that the safeguards on paper would not hold once the law was in use, and that palliative and social care were still too thin to make a genuine choice possible.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham was not in the Commons when Leadbeater's bill was last debated. On Friday he abstained, saying he did not want to tilt the room. After taking office he had already argued that fixing palliative and social care should come before a change in the criminal law. His predecessor, Keir Starmer, who has left Parliament, supported legalisation. Scotland's Parliament rejected a related bill in March. The Commons itself last voted the idea down in 2015 before the recent string of advisory majorities.

Britain now sits outside a lengthening list. Several European countries and 14 U.S. jurisdictions allow some form of assisted dying. The English and Welsh criminal law still treats assistance as a potential offence. That gap is why the debate keeps returning. Leadbeater told the BBC another attempt could come as soon as next year. Edwards's bill is dead. The coalition that almost passed Leadbeater's text is smaller than it was in June.

The six-month rule was the core design choice. It tried to limit the law to people already close to death and to keep doctors, not judges, as the first filter. Opponents said prognosis at six months is unreliable, that disabled people and those who feel they are a burden would face quiet pressure, and that an expert panel is not a court. Supporters said dying people already travel to Switzerland or act alone, and that a regulated route is safer than the present grey zone.

The vote does not settle those arguments. It does set a near-term timetable. No government bill is coming. No private member's bill in this session has the numbers. Care funding, hospice capacity and the next attempt in the Lords or Commons are now the live files. The division list from 11 September is the new baseline: 270 in favour, 286 against, and a prime minister who would rather talk about palliative care than about a statute.