A make or break moment for MPs voting on assisted dyingpublished at 08:48 British Summer Time

08:48 BST

Helen Catt
Political correspondent

It's been seven months since MPs last voted on this bill as a whole. Then they backed the principle of changing the law.

Since then, MPs have been working on the detail of how it would be done.

The bill has gone through more than 100 hours of scrutiny in Parliament with plenty of impassioned debate on both sides.

Expect more of that today.

MPs have been carefully considering their positions and, in some cases, changing them.

The vote in a few hours' time will be a make or break moment – as it decides if this attempt to change the law will continue on to the House of Lords, or if it will come to an end.

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Alex Partridge
BBC Westminster

Image source, PA Media

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the assisted dying bill, due to be voted on in its final stage by MPs, is a “bad bill” and has “not been done properly”.

On Thursday, Badenoch said she had previously been supportive of the idea but “this is not how we should do legislation like this” and doesn’t believe the “NHS and other services are ready”.

While emphasising that her party has made it a free vote - when MPs can vote according to their conscience, rather than along party line - she says “I will be voting no and I hope as many Conservative MPs as possible will be supporting me in that”.

We've just heard from Labour MP Jack Abbott, who says he'll now be voting for the assisted dying bill after originally voting against it back in November.

Abbott tells BBC Radio 4's Today programme he joined a committee scrutinising the proposal following the vote last year and he now feels the bill is in a "stronger place" after it underwent a series of changes.

Originally, a High Court judge would have to approve each request to end a life but this requirement has now been switched to a three-person panel - whose members, Abbott says, would need to receive training on coercion to ensure applicants are not pushed to undergo the process.

The Ipswich MP says the changes are helping widen "the safety net" to ensure Parliament delivers on a "safe and compassionate" bill helping terminally ill people end their life.

He adds the vote is likely to be "close".

Image source, EPA

Josh Fenton-Glynn, the Labour MP for Calder Valley, is planning on voting against the bill and tells the BBC he supports assisted dying in principle, but thinks the bill lacks safeguards to protect against both family and medical coercion.

"I'd like to see a good assisted dying bill, but unfortunately this isn't one," he tells BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

Asked what concerns him, Fenton-Glynn says his background in social care and local council work means he is aware of the financial pressures caring for people exerts on both relatives and organisations.

"I've seen what happens when families are tired and desperate at the end," he says, adding that it often leads them to make poor decisions over paying for care.

He also cites concerns from disability rights organisations, who say people with disabilities often "feel pushed into these decisions" they would not already do.

Image source, PA Media

Supporters of assisted dying have set out several reasons why they want the bill to be legalised.

The Labour MP, Kim Leadbeater, who brought forward the bill said the legislation "would give dying people, under very stringent criteria, choice, autonomy and dignity, at the end of their lives".

The Dignity in Dying campaign group said her bill provides the "most detailed, robust proposals" on the issue that "Westminster has ever considered".

Chief executive Sarah Wootton said that the fact that every year "up to 650 terminally ill people end their own lives, often in lonely and traumatic ways," proves the need for reform.

Broadcaster Dame Esther Rantzen, who has stage-four lung cancer, is another long-standing campaigner for change. "All I'm asking for is that we be given the dignity of choice," she said.

The assisted dying bill was supported by 330 MPs last year, passing its first major vote in the House of Commons with a majority of 55 MPs from a wide range of political parties.

Since last year, at least a dozen MPs who backed or abstained on the bill had said they were likely to oppose it.

On Thursday, a further four Labour MPs said they were switching sides to oppose the bill.

Markus Campbell-Savours, Kanishka Narayan, Paul Foster and Jonathan Hinder said the bill had been "drastically weakened" since last year's vote.

In a letter to colleagues, they warned that safeguards in the bill were "insufficient" and would "put vulnerable people in harm's way".

Read more about the growing number of MPs changing their mind of assisted dying.

Image source, Reuters

Kim Leadbeater became the Labour MP for Batley and Spen in 2021, after winning a by-election in the constituency by just 323 votes.

She is the sister of the constituency's former MP Jo Cox, who was murdered by a right-wing extremist in 2016.

She campaigned on issues such as increasing the safety of MPs and tackling online abuse. However, the cause she is now most known for is leading the campaign for assisted dying.

Opening the debate on the bill in November, Leadbeater said the legislation "would give dying people, under very stringent criteria, choice, autonomy and dignity, at the end of their lives".

She said the current law "is failing people" and MPs have a "duty to do what is right to fix it".

"Most people believe, as I do, that we should all have the right to make the choices and decisions we want about our own bodies," she said.

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill,, external was introduced by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater.

It proposes letting terminally ill people end their life if they:

• are over 18, live in England or Wales, and have been registered with a GP for at least 12 months
• have the mental capacity to make the choice and be deemed to have expressed a clear, settled and informed wish, free from coercion or pressure
• be expected to die within six months
• make two separate declarations, witnessed and signed, about their wish to die
• satisfy two independent doctors that they are eligible - with at least seven days between each assessment

Once an application has been approved, the patient would have to wait 14 days before proceeding.

A doctor would prepare the substance being used to end the patient's life, but the person would take it themselves.

The bill defines the co-ordinating doctor as a registered medical practitioner with "training, qualifications and experience" at a level to be specified by the health secretary. It does not say which drug would be used.

It would be illegal to coerce someone into declaring they want to end their life, with a possible 14-year prison sentence.

Image source, PA Media

Welcome to our live coverage, as the assisted dying bill returns to the Commons for its third reading, and a vote which could either see it fail or move to its next stage in the House of Lords.

The assisted dying bill is a proposed law that would allow some terminally-ill adults expected to die within six months to seek help to end their own life in England and Wales.

In November, MPs voted in favour of the bill, meaning it had moved a step closer to becoming law.

Since then, the bill has been making its way through the House of Commons to be scrutinised, discussed and amended. If passed in the Commons, the bill will go through five stages in the House of Lords and further rounds of voting.

If it is not approved, the bill will not go on to become law, making today a decisive moment for this landmark legislation.

Some amendments are expected to be voted on first this morning, before a debate on the bill as a whole begins.

We'll bring you the key developments from the debate in the Commons, so stay with us.