Hundreds of British MPs have tarnished their reputations with this Bill; Danny Kruger was not one of them

As the dust starts to settle following the shock result of the UK Parliament vote on assisted suicide, the subsequent impassioned discussion has included a focus on the “heroic MPs that defended life” during the debate in the House of Commons.

Danny Kruger, Conservative MP for East Wiltshire, and an evangelical Christian, has come in for particular attention and praise for the way he tried to oppose the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill during its Second Reading in the House.

Dan Hitchens, a former editor of the Catholic Herald, went onto the social media platform X to say that he felt that parts of Krugers speech during the debate were the best “I have heard from any living parliamentarian”.

One particular moment during Kruger’s speech has garnered attention: that was when a Labour MP called a point of order based on Kruger’s “offensive” use of the term suicide in regard to the Bill.

Kruger went on to say: “If honourable members have a difficulty with the language, then I wonder what they’re doing here. This is what we are talking about. This really is what we’re talking about.

“Far too many so-called ‘honourable’ members in the House of Commons have dishonoured themselves and our nation. They want nice clean bureaucratic language to cover up their evil. That’s why they are groaning when someone stands up and uses language that actually describes the evil in plain terms.”

Kruger then addressed what he sees as the biggest betrayal of the British population that comes through this Bill, focusing on its so-called safeguards against the risk of society’s most vulnerable members being coerced or pressured into assisted suicide.

“What are the safeguards for them?” Kruger put to the House. “I will tell you. We are the safeguard. This place. This Parliament. You and me. We are the people who protect the most vulnerable in society from harm, and yet we stand on the brink of abandoning that role.

“The Rubicon was a very small stream, Mr Speaker, but on the other side lies a very different world, a worse world with a very different idea of human value: the idea that our individual worth lies in our utility, valuable only for so long as we are useful – [and are] not a burden, not a cost, not making a mess.

“Let’s not be the parliament that authorises that idea.”

Writing for the Daily Telegraph, Tim Stanley notes that the debate and vote saw splits happening within the respective positions of both the Left and Right on the political spectrum.

He explained: “The debate divided, on the Right, conservatives from libertarians; on the Left, socialists from progressives.

“Conservatives and socialists listen to constituencies most worried about legalised suicide – religious voters, the poor and the disabled. But they also share a vision of the human being as rooted in community, whose welfare is all our responsibility. They emphasise security over liberty.

“Individualist MPs of the libertarian or progressive kind, favour maximised autonomy – and frequently spoke in terms of choice, almost to the point of separate-from-moral-concern.”

The issue of morals and thinking about them intelligently – or the worrying absence of them along with intelligent thought – during the debate was captured by another Telegraph writer (the important support in opposing assisted suicide is welcome: the Herald can’t do it all on its own).

Discussing the often disingenuous and “falsehood-heavy” debate, Madeline Grant highlights how at one point during Kruger’s speech, he was challenged by another MP over the issue of who can sign off and authorise an applicant’s request for assisted suicide.

Kruger’s response, in which he disagreed with the MP who had challenged him, “drew snickering from dozens of Labour backbenchers”, Grant writes.

Moments later, she adds, another MP, quoting directly from the Bill, “proved that Kruger was right and the sneering horde were wrong”. 

Grant sums up the disturbing implications of that small interaction as follows: “That so many parliamentarians were either too lazy or too stupid to learn about the technical aspects of the Bill they were urging others to vote for is perhaps the most damning indictment of the whole tragic charade.”

A breakdown of the how individual MPs voted on the Bill reveals that of the three largest political parties, it was the Liberal Democrats who backed the Bill most readily.

Compared to the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, the Liberal Democrats had the largest ratio of their MPs who voted “Aye” for the Bill, according to data on the vote from the UK Parliament, which illustrates how each individual MP voted.

A total of 61 Liberal Democrats voted in favour of the Bill, with only 11 voting “Noe” against it.

Labour, while having the largest number of MPs that voted for the Bill – 234 “Ayes” – and therefore standing out as the Party that most enabled the Bill to carry (in addition to it being proposed by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater), was decidedly torn on the issue, with 147 Labour MPs voting against it.

RELATED: Which party embraced assisted suicide the most? Breaking down the vote reveals all

Subsequent to the vote, Labour MP David Lammy, the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, and who is open about his Christian faith, released a letter explaining why he voted against the Bill.

“When a soul’s moment of departure becomes an option, something to be scheduled, so does the financial expense of keeping oneself on earth,” Lammy wrote.

“The calculations are unavoidable. Am I lingering in this nursing home too long? Are my carers costing too much? As it stands, the law protects people from these questions.

“I remain deeply worried that, as a consequence of this Bill, large number of people from all backgrounds – but particularly working people – will feel this pressure.

“As a Christian, I believe this risks violating something profound about the contract between the state and its citizens, which is the sanctity of life.”

The Conservative Party emerged as the party of opposition to the Bill, in terms of having the highest proportion of its MPs opposing the Bill, with 92 MPs voting against it, and 23 voting in favour.

The clear data and information on the vote means that, as a recent Herald editorial noted, MPs can be held to account for the way they voted as “the struggle starts” of the “work on reversing this appalling piece of legislation”.

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