MPs at Westminster have voted to reject the assisted dying bill, in a significant blow to those campaigning to change the law – 11 years to the day after MPs rejected a previous attempt.

Had it passed, the bill would have made it legal, in certain circumstances, for terminally ill people in England and Wales to get help to end their lives.

It is the latest development in a long-running debate at Westminster over plans to legalise assisted dying. MPs first voted for an earlier version of this bill in November 2024 – a private member’s bill put forward by Labour backbencher Kim Leadbeater. They went on to pass a final version of it in June 2025.

But when the bill moved to the Lords it ran into trouble after a relatively small number of peers proposed an unprecedentedly large number of legislative “amendments”. As a result, the bill ran out of time before the end of the parliamentary session. For it to have become law, it would have needed to have completed its Lords stages. Any changes made by peers would then have required the approval of MPs.

This new version of the bill, proposed by Labour MP Lauren Edwards, picked up where Leadbeater’s bill left off.

In the latest vote, MPs sided 286 to 270 against the bill, giving opponents a majority of 16. This was a turnaround from the first vote in November 2024, when 330 MPs voted for the bill and 275 against. Compared to June 2025, relatively few MPs directly changed their votes: just five switched from support to opposition and none moved in the opposite direction.

The bigger issue was turnout: among opponents in........

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