In this video grab taken from footage broadcast by the UK Parliamentary Recording Unit (PRU) via the Parliament TV website on November 29, 2024, tellers (L-R, Bambos Charalambous, Sarah Owen, Florence Eshalomi and Harriett Baldwin) announce that MPs have approved the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on second reading by 330 votes to 275, a majority of 55, in the House of Commons. Supporters and opponents of a bill to legalise euthanasia in the UK gathered outside the Houses of Parliament as UK lawmakers debated on whether to advance divisive and emotive legislation to allow assisted dying for terminally ill people in England and Wales.

Britain’s parliament voted in favour of a new bill to legalise assisted dying on Friday (November 29, 2024), opening the way for months of further debate on an issue that has divided the country and raised questions about the standard of palliative care.

After a passionate debate in the House of Commons, lower house of parliament, 330 lawmakers voted in favour of the “Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life)” bill with 275 against.

The vote will start months of further debate and the bill could be changed as it wends its way through both House of Commons and the upper house of parliament, the House of Lords. Kim Leadbeater, the Labour lawmaker who introduced the bill, has said she expects the process to take a further six months.

Tobacco and Vapes Bill will also bars smoking and vaping in some outdoor spaces. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Legislation intended to ban today’s British children from ever legally being able to smoke began its journey through Parliament on Tuesday (November 5, 2024).

The Tobacco and Vapes Bill will also bars smoking and vaping in some outdoor spaces such as playgrounds and the entrances to schools and hospitals. But a proposed ban on smoking in pub beer gardens has been dropped after opposition from bar owners.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the hospitality industry had “taken a real battering in recent years” and it is not “the right time” to ban smoking outside pubs.

The bill also proposes to restrict vape flavors and ban bright vape packaging aimed at children, to combat “a cynical industry that has sought to addict a new generation of children to nicotine,” Mr. Streeting said.

It also continues a plan by the previous Conservative government, which was ousted in July’s general election, to raise the minimum age for buying tobacco by one year each year, so that no one born after Jan. 1, 2009 will ever be able to buy cigarettes.

It is currently illegal to sell cigarettes, tobacco products or vapes to people under 18.

If passed – as is likely because of the governing Labour Party’s large majority in Parliament — the bill will give Britain some of the toughest anti-smoking measures in the world.

The government said the bill “breaks the cycle of addiction and paves the way for a smoke-free U.K”.

The number of people who smoke in Britain has declined by two-thirds since the 1970s, but some 6.4 million people — or about 13% of the population — still smoke, according to official figures.

Authorities say smoking causes some 80,000 deaths a year in the U.K., and remains the number one preventable cause of death, disability and poor health.