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Hello, I'm Alicia McCarthy. Thanks for downloading the Yesterday in Parliament podcast.

On Friday the 12th of September, members of the House of Lords held their first debate on the

legislation to allow terminally ill people in England and Wales to end their lives.

The red benches were packed on Friday morning.

Altogether, nearly 200 peers had put their names down to speak,

so in a highly unusual move,

this first debate on the general principles of the legislation

had been split over two days.

The private member's bill, introduced into the Commons by Kim Ledbeter,

is being shepherded through the lords by a Labour former Lord Chancellor, Lord Faulkner.

The current law is confused, causes terrible suffering,

and lacks compassion and safeguards.

People must be at the heart of this debate.

The government's own estimate is that if the law was changed to introduce assisted dying, less than 1% of deaths would be assisted

after 10 years. Under the plans, adults in England and Wales with fewer than six months to live

would be able to ask

for an assisted death, subject to approval by two doctors and a panel made up of a legal

figure, a psychiatrist and a social worker. Lord Faulkner went through the safeguards in the legislation,

including ensuring that someone had the mental capacity to make the decision and that they'd made it voluntarily.

But a conservative former Prime Minister, Theresa, now Lady May, wasn't convinced

and worried about a provision in the bill which meant coroners

...