A terminally ill mother has made an 11th-hour plea to MPs to “just pass the bill” ahead of a knife-edge vote on assisted dying. Hannah Slater, 38, has incurable cancer that has spread to her brain. Every day with her three-year-old son Theo is “a gift”, but she lives in fear of a time when he may have to be stopped from seeing her if she is suffering at the end of life.
The House of Commons is due to vote this afternoon on whether the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill will continue towards becoming law. Sharing her message for MPs, Hannah said: “Cancer has taken so much from me. It's taken my career, my body, my chance to see my son grow up.
“This is just something that would give me a little bit of independence, agency, control and dignity back. We've had years of debate, you've talked and talked so much and the safeguards are there. Just pass the bill for people like me.”
Diagnosis and decline
Hannah was diagnosed with breast cancer while on maternity leave in 2023, when Theo was just eight months old. She had treatment for 18 months including surgery, immunotherapy, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, before being given the all-clear.
After experiencing headaches, tiredness and visual disturbances, she was told just six weeks later that she had two brain tumours and leptomeningeal disease — a serious complication where cancer spreads to the cerebrospinal fluid and the delicate membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord.
Hannah said: “That has a very short prognosis of a few weeks to a few months. To go from ‘all clear’ to ‘you're possibly going to be dead in a few weeks’ within six weeks was just a horrendous shock for me, my whole family. Since then, I have been working really hard to stay alive.”
Living with fear
Hannah is now undergoing treatment to prolong her life and is on her third chemotherapy drug of the last year. However, the cancer is incurable and each drug is eventually expected to stop working.
She said: “Every day that I can spend with my son is a gift, but I am also quite painfully aware on some days that it's not always going to be like this. I have ups, but I also do have real downs where I can feel the cancer progressing.”
The cancer has damaged her left optic nerve, leaving her with irreversible sight loss. She has been told she will likely lose the vision in her right eye and become blind. She may also lose her hearing and ability to walk, talk and eat, and be left incontinent.
Hannah, who lives in Bristol with her partner Tom, said: “I don't want any of that. Who does? What I would prefer — and think many people would prefer — is the option to have an assisted death, where you can die with dignity and peace, surrounded by the people you choose and you love, at the time that is right for you.”
Preparing her son
Hannah fears being parted from Theo in her final days or weeks and wants the right to say goodbye on her own terms. She added: “Maybe one day he would come in and he wouldn't recognise me because I'm not his mummy anymore.
“That breaks my heart — the thought that I would frighten him or that he might not be able to come anymore to see me. I just find that so hard, and I would rather go out well. I'm doing as much as I can to prepare him.
“He knows I have cancer. He knows I am probably going to die from it. He asks me about it quite a lot and we have conversations about death. He says, ‘I'll miss you when you die, mummy’, and things like that. We're open about it, but it's really really hard. You want to protect your children.”
Hannah was referred to hospice care when her condition deteriorated last Christmas. She said the end-of-life care available is “fantastic” — but it is not enough.
She added: “We should absolutely be improving palliative care and social care, and we should be doing it all at the same time. The two are not separate things; they go hand in hand. I can have palliative care and also have an assisted death when I'm ready. Maybe I wouldn't even use it, I don't know.
“But I don't want to live my remaining months with fear of what the end looks like. I want to live in the moment now with as much joy and peace as I can with my family, and having the option of an assisted death in this country would really just give me so much comfort and peace.”
Campaign and political context
Hannah described the blocking of Kim Leadbeater’s bill earlier this year by a handful of peers as an “absolute democratic scandal”. She has campaigned in favour of the legislation in Westminster when her health allows and recently met with MPs at an event organised by My Death, My Decision.
The group’s chair, Dave Sowry, said: “Hannah shouldn't have to spend the time she has left coming to Parliament and pleading with politicians to listen. But she has, because this matters enormously to her and to many other terminally ill people.
“The Commons backed this legislation before, and the public have made it clear that they support a change in the law.” If MPs back the bill in a second consecutive parliamentary session, the House of Lords will not be able to block it again.
The bill is backed by the Express Give Us Our Last Rights campaign, which has found since early 2022 for a change in the law. Analysis by this newspaper found that around 275 hours of parliamentary time have been devoted to assisted dying in recent years. The total time includes 115 hours in the House of Commons, where a committee of 23 MPs spent 90 hours examining the bill line by line.
The outcome of today’s vote is thought to rest on a knife-edge. At least two MPs who voted in favour of the bill are no longer in Parliament. Sir Keir Starmer quit as an MP last week and is yet to be replaced, while Makerfield MP Josh Simons was replaced by Andy Burnham. The Prime Minister has said he will abstain to avoid influencing his colleagues’ decisions.
Opponents claim this indicates that legalising assisted dying should not be a priority and is likely to weaken support for the bill. Supporters insist they have not seen any significant change in the numbers expected to back it. A source close to the pro-bill campaign insisted that support for assisted dying is “as strong as ever among MPs”. However, there are concerns that turnout for this vote may be lower.
The bill passed its third reading last summer with 314 votes in favour and 291 against — a majority of 23. If a majority of MPs back the bill again, it will progress through the usual stages once more including a third reading in the Commons. Some steps may be accelerated — such as the committee stage, which took place last year.
Crucially, the Lords will not be able to block the legislation again. If they failed to make enough progress, it could become law without peers’ approval under the Parliament Act. If a majority of MPs vote against the bill today, it will fall. It could be reintroduced in a future parliamentary session, but this would mean restarting the lengthy process.
Tory MP Kit Malthouse, who served on the committee, said: “Our constituents, no matter who they vote for, are suffering under a status quo that does not work, and I have been proud to work alongside MPs of all parties to progress this historic reform.
“The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is not far off receiving 300 hours of scrutiny and debate across the Commons and the Lords. Very few Government Bills get anywhere near that. A majority of MPs voted to back law change last year. We now have a duty to see it through.”
Lauren Edwards MP said the bill’s blocking earlier this year meant “terminally ill people and their families were let down”. She added: “All I am asking MPs to do is to send this Bill back to the House of Lords so that they can finish what they started.
“The Lords rightly play an important role in scrutinising, refining and often improving legislation that we send them. Let them amend this Bill if they choose to and send it back to MPs for a final decision. That is how our democratic decisions are made and what should happen now.”
Warning of the “real human cost” of delaying the legislation, she added: “MPs have already voted to support this Bill twice after speaking to their constituents, engaging with organisations and groups affected by its provisions, and studying the arguments in great detail.
“I am confident they will do so once more tomorrow so we can help restore trust in the ability of parliament to deliver on an issue that the majority of our constituents want.”
The 275 hours spent considering assisted dying in Westminster also include 134 hours of debates in the House of Lords, six hours of Westminster Hall debates, and an estimated 20 hours of evidence sessions and discussion during an inquiry by the Commons Health and Social Care Committee.
Writing in the Express today, Dignity in Dying chief executive Sarah Wootton pays tribute to three campaigners who died while waiting for Parliament to come to a final decision on the Bill. She says: “Their voices are what is too easily lost in this debate: not process and procedure, as important as they are, but people who are running out of time.”
Nathan Stilwell, spokesperson for Humanists UK, said some terminally ill adults are suffering and “do not have time to spare”. He added: “Kicking the can down the road again is not an acceptable option, and the right thing to do now is to legislate with care.”
Elise Burns spent her final months challenging peers to look her in the eye. Living with secondary breast cancer that had spread through her body, she campaigned tirelessly, saying she was not scared of death but “terrified of a painful, drawn-out death”. Nathaniel Dye spent his last months telling MPs and peers that his very death depended on their decision. A music teacher awarded an MBE for his cancer campaigning, Nat continued to speak out while living with terminal cancer. Keith Williams spent a career as a social worker fighting for other people's rights and dignity, then spent his last months fighting for his own. Diagnosed with two terminal lung diseases, he campaigned until weeks before he died in June. All three died this year — none lived to see the law reform they fought for.
Wootton wrote that political inaction is not a neutral act, it has consequences, and it has victims. Law change is already happening elsewhere in these islands. Jersey and the Isle of Man have both passed assisted dying laws, meaning their citizens are moving closer to having the choice that Elise, Nat and Keith fought for. The Prime Minister has rightly spoken of wanting a new politics; bringing those burned by injustice into the conversation, rather than shutting them out from it. Nowhere is that needed more than for the debate on assisted dying.
He is right that too many people are being let down by our health and care systems. So too are dying people, under an assisted dying ban that forces them to endure unimaginable suffering or take drastic action at home or abroad with no safeguards. Fixing care won't remove the need for choice at the end of life; these are two different injustices, and both need solving. MPs now have the chance to change that: to remember Elise, Nat, Keith, the many others, and to change what has been kicked into the long grass for too long, for the sake of the next dying person who cannot afford to wait.
