MPs attending Parliament today to vote on the new assisted dying Bill could be tempted to think nothing has changed since they voted on the same issue last year.

Certainly it is true that Lauren Edwards has chosen to bring back a near-identical Bill to the one introduced by Kim Leadbeater. Yet it would be a serious mistake to think that for this reason MPs should automatically march through the same voting lobby as last year.

The Bill may be similar, but the context has changed markedly.

MPs now have evidence from a House of Lords Select Committee last autumn to draw on, where a succession of Royal medical colleges, professional bodies and groups representing vulnerable people expressed grave concerns with the Bill.

At the end of August, the Government published an updated impact assessment, highlighting the risks that the Bill would present to minority groups and raising its estimate of the number of people who would die should the Bill become law.

We also have the benefit of Hospice UK’s landmark report this year on the state of end-of-life care in this country, revealing that “nearly 60% of hospices in England have made or are considering cuts to frontline services” and a new publication by Marie Curie suggesting that one in three people in England die with unmet palliative care needs.

It is for such reasons that Andy Burnham set out his view that palliative and social care funding must be addressed before any further consideration of assisted dying.

However, it is not just greater information about the........

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