How Suffolk MPs voted on historic assisted dying bill

On Friday afternoon, MPs voted 330 to 275, majority 55, to approve Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill at second reading, although it will still face further scrutiny. 

Of Suffolk's eight representatives in the House of Commons, four of the county's MPs voted for the bill and four against.

Some Suffolk MPs had still not revealed how they were going to vote until days before the vote. 

How Suffolk MPs voted on the assisted dying bill (Image: Joao Santos/LDRS) Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, MP for Suffolk Coastal, said she "remained committed to listening to all sides of this debate" in her column for this newspaper earlier this month, but did not allude to how she would vote. She was one of 234 Labour MPs who backed the bill. 

READ MORE: 'We have to change the law' - Son of campaigner for assisted dying backs bill

Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket MP Dr Peter Prinsley voiced his support of the bill prior to the five-hour long debate in the Commons. 

Dr Peter Prinsley, MP for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Image: Newsquest)

In a speech during the debate, he said: "When I was a young doctor, I thought it unconscionable, but now I’m an old doctor and I feel sure it’s the right change.

“We’re talking here of people at the end of their lives, wishing to choose the time and place to die, this is not some slippery slope, we are shortening death, not life, for our patients.”

South Suffolk MP James Cartlidge and Waveney Valley MP Adrian Ramsay also backed the bill.

Nick Timothy, of West Suffolk, Patrick Spencer, of Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, Jack Abbott, of Ipswich, and Jess Asato, of Lowestoft, voted against the bill. 

Ms Asato was the only local MP to speak during in the House of Commons against the bill.

She said: “Whilst I would have once been supportive of the principle of assisted dying, and might wish this option for myself, I have increasingly found myself unable to reconcile my desire to safeguard the most vulnerable by putting that principle into practice.

“My focus with any piece of legislation is the potential it creates for abuse and coercion - I am concerned that if this bill passes we will see people coerced either by an abuser or by societal expectation into ending their own life.”

Mr Abbott said: "I feel voting for this law change now, in its current state, presents too many risks. I am not prepared to take a gamble over an issue that will have such a profound effect on people in this country." 

The bill will next go to committee stage where MPs can table amendments, and on Friday a motion was approved to allow the committee considering the Bill to have the power to send for people, papers and records as part of its sessions.

The bill will face further scrutiny and votes in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, meaning any change in the law would not be agreed until next year at the earliest.