Georgia L Gilholy is a journalist.
Charlotte Brontë’s best novel is one you have probably never heard of. Villette, first published in 1853, tells the story of a troubled young Englishwoman, Lucy Snowe, recently arrived to teach at a school in the titular fictional city. Based on Brontë’s own stint as a lonely schoolmistress in Brussels, the story remains one of the most sensitive and believable literary explorations of depression. Thankfully, things begin to look up for Miss Snowe as the tale progresses.
Today, Brontë’s semi-autobiographical protagonist might simply have been offered death as a remedy for her mental distress.
Belgium legalised euthanasia in 2002 for adults suffering from a serious and incurable medical condition causing “constant and unbearable physical or psychological suffering that cannot be alleviated”. Last year, there were 77 cases of euthanasia in Belgium where “cognitive disorders” were noted as the underlying condition and another 74 cases in which a “psychiatric condition” was recorded.
While the Bill before Parliament today would not permit assisted suicide on grounds of mental illness alone, how certain can we be that a wish to die is magically insulated from an individual’s loneliness, poverty, sorrow, lack of access to care or the fear of burdening their loved ones and carers? We cannot.
Since MPs last voted on assisted suicide in June 2025, the Government has acknowledged the grim reality of such pressures. Its latest Equality Impact Assessment now identifies “neglect, poverty and difficult living conditions” as pressures which might weigh upon disabled people considering assisted death. It sensibly points out the fact that disabled people in particular may be more susceptible to feeling like a burden and that pressure “is not necessarily felt or applied by other people”. Disabled people are already twice as likely as non-disabled people to experience domestic abuse, including coercive behaviour.
Indeed, the political and evidential landscape has changed sharply in the fifteen months since MPs last voted on this issue.
In June, Lauren Edwards MP revived the Bill her Labour colleague Kim Leadbeater first introduced. The previous Bill got through the Commons but ran out of time in the Lords. Reintroducing substantially the same legislation also keeps open the possibility of the Parliament Acts #eventually being invoked, should the Bill again risk failing to pass the upper chamber.
If assisted suicide reaches the statute book via a rarely used constitutional override (and never used for a Private Members’ Bill), it will likely remain politically unstable and ripe for expansion. This is what happened with the Hunting Act. It was a conscience vote but passed using the Parliament Acts. Yet the issue is far from settled, and campaigners continue to push for the law’s expansion.
The fact that this Bill is substantially the same as the one MPs voted on last June hardly means that the circumstances surrounding it are unchanged.
The Government’s updated impact assessment, released last month, now gives a central estimate of 3,502 assisted deaths in Year 10, up from 2,183 in the previous assessment: an increase of 60 per cent. Its high scenario has also risen from 4,559 deaths a year to 6,257, although this figure is not a definitive upper limit.
Separately, a sensitivity analysis applying New Zealand’s actual and projected rates to England and Wales suggests 9,810 assisted deaths in Year 10. The Government said it changed its methodology in part because there was “limited evidence” to support a “levelling off” in the growth rate after five years.
The national backdrop against which these laws would land has, if anything, grown less reassuring since last summer.
Hospice UK recently reported that hospices in England ended the previous financial year with a collective deficit of more than £70 million, over double the year before. At least 33 had already made significant cuts. Almost 60 per cent were making or considering reductions. Specialist community hospice visits had fallen by 150,000, and 380 hospice beds had gone out of use.
Separate research cited by Hospice UK estimates that around 170,000 people in England die each year without adequate palliative care and support. The NHS currently has a higher death rate from the “adverse effects of medical treatment” than Sudan. Nearly one in three people in England is now dying with unmet palliative care needs.
It is also important to recall that there is now a major political precedent in the United Kingdom for rejecting a specific assisted suicide Bill. The Scottish Parliament, after having initially backed assisted suicide in principle, rejected its Bill at Stage Three by 69 votes to 57 back in March. The distinction between supporting such plans in principle and accepting a particular Bill is therefore directly relevant to MPs’ decisions this afternoon.
Dozens of serious flaws in the legislation now reintroduced by Lauren Edwards in substantially the same form have been identified by Royal Colleges, professional bodies, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and charities specialising in mental health, domestic abuse and representing vulnerable people. Not a single one of those organisations has been prepared to state that the Bill is safe, and all have raised significant concerns. Government ministers have likewise been unwilling to confirm the Bill is safe.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists said it “cannot support the Bill in its current form.” The Royal College of Physicians and Royal College of Psychiatrists jointly raised concerns about capacity, vulnerable people with remediable mental-health or other unmet needs, and NHS resources. Women’s Aid has said the Bill lacks effective safeguarding for domestic-abuse survivors.
That is why today’s debate cannot simply be treated as a rerun of June 2025. MPs, whatever their personal view on the principle of assisted suicide, would do well to reject this bill today. Britain is already grappling with more than enough problems. Let us not add these dangerous proposals to the list.