Health editor Hanna Geissler shares her latest assessment of the Bill’s chances.

Express health editor Hanna and Dame Esther’s campaigning daughter, Rebecca Wilcox (Image: Express/Ian Vogler)

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill returns to the House of Commons today for a second report stage debate that will last for around five hours. It will no doubt be another well-attended debate, with emotional and insightful contributions from MPs across the political spectrum.

The critical third reading vote, which will decide whether the landmark legislation should continue on its legislative journey by passing into the House of Lords, is not expected to be called and will most likely take place next Friday. But it will nonetheless be a crucial day of scrutiny and improvements to tighten the Bill — and another milestone for the Daily Express Give Us Our Last Rights crusade.

For more than three years, this newspaper has given a voice to those affected by the UK’s ban on assisted dying.

Long before the national debate was reignited by Dame Esther Rantzen’s powerful intervention, we began sharing the stories of those fighting to change the law.

Terminally ill people and those who have seen loved ones suffer terrible deaths, take their own lives in traumatic circumstances, or travel to Dignitas in Switzerland have relived some of their darkest and most painful memories in order to show why a change in the law is desperately needed.

Some of them — like David Minns, the cancer patient who launched our crusade — are sadly no longer with us.

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As campaigners gather in Parliament Square this morning, Dame Esther Rantzen has shared with the Express her latest message, imploring MPs to allow terminally ill people like her to “face the future with confidence and hope”.

Opposition voices are as loud as ever, and would have you believe that the tide had turned against the Bill.

But the number of MPs publicly declaring their intentions to vote against the Bill does not yet come close to the figure needed to overturn November’s majority. Some have also revealed their intentions to vote in favour for the first time.

We remain cautiously optimistic that MPs are listening to the heartbreaking stories we have shared and will be reassured by the careful safeguards built into Kim Leadbeater’s legislation.