Assisted dying bill is a once-in-a-decade opportunity, says Kim Leadbeater before vote

Legalizing assisted dying is a once-in-a-decade opportunity, the MP leading the bill said in her final plea to parliament before a sharp vote.

Kim Leadbeater urged her colleagues to support the principle of bodily autonomy in her final interview before MPs vote on Friday on a bill that would fundamentally change the role of the state in matters of life and death.

Asked whether she thought people would later regret being on the wrong side of history if the legislation was voted down, she said: “I think in 10 years we’ll look back and think, why is this hasn’t happened before? I think people will then have to look back and think about how they voted.”

Leadbeater told the Guardian that the fight for assisted dying is akin to the women’s rights movement’s push to give women the right to choose abortion – and that terminally ill people should be given similar rights over their bodies.

More than 160 MPs hope to speak during the five-hour debate in parliament, where they can vote freely on the bill. It allows assisted dying for people with a terminal illness who have less than six months to live, subject to approval by two doctors and a Supreme Court judge.

Terminally ill patients who are in favor of the change and disability activists who oppose it will hold rallies for and against the bill. It is said that at least a hundred MPs are still undecided and some are expected to abstain or make a choice in the House itself.

Leadbeater’s team have said they are confident in their numbers and new names backing the bill now include Reform’s Rupert Lowe and new Labor MPs Terry Jermy, Mark Ferguson, Oliver Ryan, Connor Naismith and Claire Hazelgrove.

However, on Thursday, MPs hoping to stop the bill said they believed the momentum was in their favor after at least a dozen undecided MPs declared in the past 24 hours that they would vote against it.

They include Labour’s Chi Onwurah, the chairman of the science and technology committee, Bell Ribeiro-Addy and at least ten new Labor MPs, including Gordon McKee, Liam Conlon, Katrina Murray and Tom Collins.

Leadbeater promised MPs that civil servants and ministers would start working in detail on the potential impact of the bill, and that there was “time to work on getting this right”. The measures in the bill will take two years to implement.

Government sources said a minister would be placed on the law committee and changes could be made – but it will remain a private members’ bill.

Keir Starmer, who was neutral on the bill, has said he will vote on Friday and campaigners are confident he will support it.

The Prime Minister told a press conference on Thursday that he had “a huge interest and experience in this, having (as Director of Public Prosecutions) spent five years looking at every single case that was ever investigated”.

Leadbeater said of Starmer: “He knows the law is not fit for purpose and he knows it needs to change. But I think he has acted very respectfully in allowing the debate to take place in the public domain, but at the same time maintaining the government’s very clear position of neutrality.”

Leadbeater said the case particularly resonated with her as a woman – and especially at a time when women’s rights were under threat in parts of the world.

“It feels like a snapshot in time when it comes to the rights of individuals,” she said. “Certainly as a woman I have the rights over my own body.”

Leadbeater said she had deep sympathy for the experiences of people with disabilities who feared the bill’s potential for expansion, or coercion, but that she had never wavered in her belief that people should have control over their deaths.

“I have no doubt that the law needs to change,” she said. “What always makes me feel uncomfortable is when different rights conflict with each other. So as much as I will fight for better treatment of the rights of people with disabilities by society, I will also fight for the rights of dying people.”

She said MPs concerned about the process should be reassured that major work on the bill will be done in the next parliamentary phase, when a committee of MPs will consider the legislation.

“Legislation is being added all the time, and most MPs do not examine it line by line. Now you can say that’s wrong, and maybe it is, but this bill is going to get more attention than probably any other piece of legislation.”

She said her final message to MPs who had doubts about the process was: “If you can see that there is a clear problem that needs to be solved… we have a duty to create good legislation and at the moment the legal situation is not suitable for the purpose.

“So if they believe in principle in the autonomy, dignity and choice that the change in law will give people, they should vote ‘yes’.”

Leadbeater also backed Health Minister Wes Streeting, who has been a vocal opponent of the bill, saying she had every confidence he would work to implement whatever parliament decided.

‘He has work to do. “I have every confidence that he and everyone else in government will do the job brilliantly,” she said.

The bill will not gain any additional ‘government time’ if passed, the Guardian understands. It will not return to parliament until April and a bill committee of MPs will be chosen by Leadbeater to scrutinize all provisions. She has promised to include opponents on the committee.

Impact and workability assessments will also be carried out across government departments. A senior government source said: “We don’t want to end up in a similar situation to Brexit, where no work was allowed to be done at all, leading to complete chaos.”

Many opponents have raised major concerns about the bill’s process, saying the time for debate in the House of Commons was shortened due to the nature of the private member’s bill.

Conservative MP Jesse Norman accused the government of ‘going in the wrong direction with the bill… Far from public debate preceding legislation, legislation has preceded debate. This is completely the wrong direction.”

Campaigners on both sides have made a final plea to MPs before the vote. On Thursday, Labour’s disabled activist wing wrote a letter to all MPs urging them to reject the legislation.

“A significant proportion of our members raise serious concerns about the potential risks and implications of such legislation,” Disability Labor said in its statement.