THE Archbishop of Canterbury, senior bishops, and two former Archbishops turned out in force last Friday in the House of Lords to help block a Bill that would allow doctors to help terminally ill people to kill themselves ( News, Comment, 12 May). Supporters of the Bill described it as "an onslaught from the biggest political campaign in church history".

The Lords voted by 148 to 100 in favour of an amendment that would delay the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill for six months, and ruin its chance of becoming law in the current parliamentary session.

Lord Joffe's Bill, if it became law, would allow for terminally ill patients to sign a legal declaration that they wanted to die. Patients could then be prescribed a lethal dose of medication to take themselves.

Ninety peers spoke during the debate, which lasted for seven-and-a-half hours. Dr Williams said: "Whether or not you believe that God enters into consideration, it remains true that to specify, even in the fairly broad terms of the Bill, conditions under which it would be both reasonable and legal to end your life is to say that certain kinds of human life are not worth living."

He spoke of how the Bill would change the relationship between patient and physician. "The physician is not obliged to raise the possibility of assisted dying with the patient, according to the Bill, yet every patient will know that this is a statutory possibility, and there are many ways of exerting pressure on people, even without intent."

He said that the Bill had implications for everyone: "for the suicidal teenager as well as the dying 80-year-old".

This was Lord Joffe's third attempt to introduce the Bill. He promised to reintroduce it. The Bishop of St Albans, the Rt Revd Christopher Herbert, who sat on the Select Committee on the Bill, described it as "morally confused, yet so chillingly plausible". "This Bill seeks to legalise assisted dying, which of course sounds enormously compassionate; but in reality it is about assisted suicide for the terminally ill."

He said that people were not being "absolutely straight about what the Bill entails". One of the driving forces behind the Bill, the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, had changed its name to Dignity in Dying, "which seems to imply there is only one dignified way to die - by euthanasia or assisted suicide", he argued. "The organisation has taken a phrase that is used in palliative care and by the hospice movement, and has turned it around to mean the exact opposite of what it originally meant."

The Bishop of Portsmouth, Dr Kenneth Stevenson, who has just returned to work after treatment for leukaemia, said the Bill did not include safeguards for vulnerable people in a state of temporary depression.

"Having had to face up to my own mortality, I can identity with the mental trauma that comes with life-threatening illness - a trauma that can so easily slip over into depression. Hence my particular concern is that the current version of this Bill has weakened the safeguard against assisted dying for people who are depressed. Yet both common sense and research show that a significant proportion of terminally ill people who request euthanasia are suffering from transient depression."

The House of Lords debate after the Bill's First Reading lasted for nine hours ( News, 14 October). The Select Committee Review had come to no clear conclusion on the Bill.

At the beginning of last Friday's debate, Lord Joffe said there was a great deal of misrepresentation in discussions of the Bill. "There appears to be a belief among some of those opposing the Bill that it allows doctors arbitrarily to kill terminally ill patients; that it applies to patients without mental capacity, Alzheimer's being frequently quoted; that the Bill and its supporters are opposed to palliative care; and that it applies to all patients rather than only to terminally ill patients. Nothing could be further from the truth."

But he said that the current law had defects, and put doctors in a difficult position, if, "moved with compassion", they decided to help patients end their lives. Also: "It results in patients' leaving the United Kingdom to die lonely deaths at Dignitas in Zurich, without any legislative safeguards whatever."

He said that public opinion was not against the Bill, and that he had received letters from a "relatively small number of deeply committed Christian worshippers". These, he said, were "the result of a massive political campaign by the Churches, led by the Catholic Archbishop of Cardiff [the Most Revd Peter Smith], which included the dissemination of 500,000 leaflets or DVDs asking recipients, among other things, to write to peers and MPs to express their opposition to the Bill".

Speaking after the vote, Mark Slattery of Dignity in Dying said: "The Bill has faced an onslaught from the biggest political campaign in church history, but public support for it has held firm. The Bill will be back, and the campaign has not stopped."

Campaigning groups opposed to the Bill, including the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC), the Right to Life, CARE, ProLife Alliance, and Life, all issued statements saying that they were relieved at the result of the vote. Dr Peter Saunders of Care Not Killing called for wider access to high-quality palliative care.

Before the debate, nine leaders from six faith groups sent an open letter of opposition to both Houses of Parliament. On the morning of the debate, The Times published a letter from Dr Williams, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, and the Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks. The Archbishop and the Cardinal also took part in a discussion on BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

The former Archbishops of Canterbury and York, Lord Carey and Lord Habgood, both voted to block the Bill, as well the Bishops of Chester, Coventry, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Oxford, Portsmouth, Southwark, Southwell & Nottingham, Winchester, and Worcester.

A spokesman for the Church of England said: "It is no surprise that Lords Spiritual chose to vote when they had such strong cause for concern."