Legalising assisted dying is a “once in a decade” opportunity, the MP leading the bill has said in her final plea to parliament before a knife-edge 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 shift the role of the state in matters of life and death.
Asked if she thought people would later regret being on the wrong side of history if the legislation was voted down, she said: “I think we will look back in 10 years’ time and think: why didn’t this happen sooner? I think then people will have to look back and think about how they voted.”
Leadbeater told the Guardian that the fight for assisted dying was akin to the women’s rights movement’s push to allow a woman the right to choose an abortion – and that terminally ill people should be given similar rights over their bodies.
More than 160 MPs are hoping to speak in the five-hour debate in parliament where they will have a free vote on the bill. It would allow assisted dying for those with a terminal illness and less than six months to live, subject to approval by two doctors and a high court judge.
Terminally ill patients in favour of the change and disability activists who are against it will hold rallies for and against the bill. At least 100 MPs are said to still be undecided and a number are expected to abstain or make their choice in the chamber itself.
Leadbeater’s team has said it is confident in its numbers, and new names backing the bill include Reform’s Rupert Lowe and the new Labour MPs Terry Jermy, Mark Ferguson, Oliver Ryan, Connor Naismith and Claire Hazelgrove.
On Thursday, however, MPs hoping to stop the bill said they believed the momentum was in their favour, after at least a dozen undecided MPs declared in the last 24 hours that they would vote against it.
They include Labour’s Chi Onwurah, who is the chair of the science, innovation and technology committee, Bell Ribeiro-Addy and at least 10 new Labour MPs, including Gordon McKee, Liam Conlon, Katrina Murray and Tom Collins.
Leadbeater, the Labour MP for Spen Valley, has promised MPs that civil servants and ministers would begin detailed work on the potential impact of the bill, and that there is “time to work on getting this right”. The measures in the bill will have two years to be implemented.
Government sources said a minister would be put on the bill committee and amendments could be made – but it will remain a private member’s bill.
Keir Starmer, who has been neutral on the bill, has said he will vote on Friday and campaigners are confident he will back it.
The prime minister told a press conference on Thursday that he had “a huge amount of interest and experience in this, having looked [as director of public prosecutions] at every single case for five years that was ever investigated”.
Leadbeater said of Starmer: “He knows that the law is not fit for purpose and he knows it needs to change. But I think he’s done a very respectful thing by letting the debate play out in the public domain, but keeping that very clear government position of neutrality.”
Leadbeater said the cause had resonated with her particularly as a woman – and particularly at a moment in time when women’s rights were under threat in parts of the world. “It does feel like a moment in time in terms of the rights of individuals,” she said. “Particularly as a woman, the rights over my own body.”
Leadbeater said she had deep sympathy with the experiences of disabled people who were frightened about the bill’s potential for expansion, or about coercion, but she had never wavered in her conviction that people should have control over their deaths.
“I don’t have any doubts that the law needs to change,” she said. “What I am always uncomfortable with is when we’ve got different rights conflicting. So as much as I will fight for the rights of disabled people to be treated better by society, I will also fight for the rights of dying people.”
She said MPs who were worried about the process should be reassured that there would be major work done on the bill at its next parliamentary stage, when a committee of MPs would look at the legislation.
“There is legislation coming through all the time, and most MPs are not scrutinising that line by line. Now you can say that that’s wrong, and maybe it is, but this bill will have more scrutiny 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’ve got a duty to create good law and at the moment the legal situation is not fit for purpose. So if they believe in principle, the autonomy, the dignity and the choice that change of law will give to people, they should vote yes.”
Leadbeater also supported the health secretary, Wes Streeting, who has been an outspoken opponent of the bill, saying she had full confidence he would work to implement whatever parliament decided. “He has got a job to do. I’m extremely confident that he and anybody else in government will do the job brilliantly,” she said.
The bill will not get additional “government time” if it passes, the Guardian understands. It would not return to parliament until next April and a bill committee of MPs would be chosen by Leadbeater to scrutinise all the provisions. She has promised to include opponents on the committee.
Impact and workability assessments would also be done in government departments. One senior government source said: “We do not want to end up in a similar situation as we did with Brexit where no work was allowed to be done at all, which led to complete chaos.”
Many opponents have raised significant concerns about the bill’s process, saying that the time for debate in the Commons was curtailed because of the nature of a private member’s bill.
The Conservative MP Jesse Norman accused the government of proceeding with the bill the “wrong way round … Far from public debate preceding legislation, legislation has preceded debate. This is completely the wrong way round.”
Campaigners on both sides have been making final pleas to MPs before the vote. On Thursday, Labour’s disabled activist wing wrote to all MPs urging them to reject the legislation.
“A significant portion of our members express serious concerns about the potential risks and implications of such legislation,” Disability Labour said in its statement.
