Nearly a decade ago, in September 2015, an assisted dying bill was debated in the House of Commons. It was proposed as a private members bill by the backbench Labour MP Rob Marris and it would have enabled terminally ill, mentally competent adults to request assistance to end their own lives, subject to upfront safeguards. The bill was rejected at its second reading by 330 votes to 118.1

That summer, a man called Bob Cole from Chester, who was dying with mesothelioma, had urged MPs to change the law. He was making this demand for himself, knowing any change would come too late for him to access it, but for terminally ill people who would come after him. Bob was able to exercise control over how his life ended at Dignitas a few weeks before the House of Commons vote. His final wish, to see assisted dying legalised across the UK, remains unfulfilled.2

On the surface little has changed since 2015. Remarkably, despite the attention this debate attracts, MPs have had no further opportunity to debate an assisted dying bill. Many more Britons like Bob have travelled to Switzerland for an assisted death; in fact, membership of Dignitas is at an all-time high.3 That option is of course only available to those who can afford it and who are well enough to travel. When it comes to the consequences of the blanket prohibition of assisted dying here, campaigners consider the outsourcing of difficult deaths to other jurisdictions just …