The central issue before MPs, as they decide how to vote on the latest version of Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill, is how to value individual autonomy relative to collective responsibility for vulnerable members of society when making regulations around the end of life. Should terminally ill people be allowed to end their lives with medical help? If so, under what safeguards? The question remains ethically, medically and legally complex.

Technological and social changes enabling people to live much longer have created challenges around the resourcing of care and experiences of ageing and dying. There are profound questions about how we manage the final stages of life – and what we owe to those living through them.

Ms Leadbeater, a Labour backbencher, has taken on the challenge of steering this bill through parliament with principle and empathy. The past nine months have seen an impassioned debate that has, rightly, filtered beyond parliament and the news media into everyday life. From the start, as this newspaper

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