PMQs is imminent. Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.

William Hague has achieved a rare Tory election victory; he has won the contest to be Oxford University’s next chancellor.

The university has released the figures for the final round of voting, where the winner emerged after the final five candidates were ranked using the alternative vote system. The runner up was Elish Angiolini, the lawyer and academic.

It was not a party political vote, but Hague, a former Conservative leader and former foreign secretary, may take some consolation for seeing off three former Labour ministers. Angiolini was solicitor general for a Labour government in Scotland, but was retained in post when the SNP government took over because she was not seen as party political. Hague also beat Jan Royall, a former Labour leader of the Lords, who came third, and Peter Mandelson, who came fourth.

Dominic Grieve, the former Tory attorney general, was fifth.

Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has poked fun at Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, for missing the Commons vote yesterday on the bill that will gradually ban smoking, by progressively raising the age at which people can legally buy cigarettes.

The tobacco and vapes bill passed its second reading by 415 votes to 47. All four of the other Reform UK MPs voted against but Farage, a strong supporter of smoking, missed the vote because he was presenting his GB News show.

As the Mirror reports, Farage told his audience:

I bet I get a load of stick for appearing on here at 7pm. Why? Because this afternoon we have a debate on the tobacco and vapes bill second reading.

Believe you me, the Cromwellians are fully in charge.”

The reason I’m not voting at 7pm is because it’s going pass with a majority of about 300 I think, and I think I’m better off here debating national issues on GB News in a situation like that.

Retweeting the Mirror story, Streeting added this comment:

Gutted. I thought he’d abstained because I’d won him over with my appeal to the libertarian right that there is no freedom in addiction - only higher costs to the individual and higher taxes for the general public.

Dame Esther Rantzen has urged “as many MPs as possible” to attend Friday’s debate and listen to the arguments on both sides to make their minds up on assisted dying. Harriet Sherwood has the story.

A reader asks:

What happens if the Assisted Dying bill isn’t passed on Friday?
It feels like momentum is shifting against it passing, but they may just be the news stories.

Will the Govt pick it up and re-do with wider consultation etc, in line with some of the objections?

Perhaps so, if the number of those indicating they would support a Bill with wider consultation, Govt sponsored etc is the difference between it passing and falling?

Or is that it - finished for another 10 years or so?

If MPs do vote against the assisted dying bill on Friday, I think the most likely outcome would be parliament losing interest in the topic for a decade at least. As a cause, it would certainly be finished for this parliament. But without a significant change in the composition of parliament, campaigners after the next election might well decide there is no point trying again. These issues can get settled for a generation; the alternative vote referendum took place in 2011 and the PR debate has still has not recovered.

As you say, there do seem to be a lot of MPs who are not against assisted dying in principle, but who do want more debate, particularly with input from government about how assisted dying might be implemented. But it is very hard to see why the government would want to start that process after a vote against on Friday. That is why some people are arguing that the best option for those who want assisted dying to pass would be for the vote to be pulled on Friday, in return for a proper government review.

The amendment tabled by cross-bench MPs seems designed to achieve this. But it would amount to a vote against the bill, and it would be seen by some as a vote against the bill in principle.

Ministers have also been vague about what, if anything, they would do to throw government resources behind a proper view of this issue. With leadership from No 10, and proper consultation, the government probably could construct a decent Commons majority for assisted dying legislation with strong safeguards. Public opinion is there already. But at this point Keir Starmer does not seem to have the appetite for that. Whether that is because he is just biding his time, or because his personal support for the cause is weakening, or because he thinks it is just too much of a distraction for a government that should be focusing on the NHS and the cost of living, I don’t know.

In her BBC Breakfast interview Kim Leadbeater also dismissed claims that, if her assisted dying bill gets a second reading on Friday, MPs won’t get enough time to consider the detail of it before it goes to the Lords. She said:

The bill has been out there for nearly three weeks now. [MPs have] been looking at it in great detail. And I think the sense is that people think the right thing to do is to pass the bill at second reading, which would then mean we would go into the committee stage in the new year, where there would be hours and hours and hours of scrutiny of the bill.

With government bills, MPs do get a lot of opportunity to consider and amend the legislation in subsequent stages before it goes to the House of Lords. But the procedural rules are slightly different for private members’ bills, which is why some MPs believe that, without the government intervening and providing more time for scrutiny, the Commons won’t be able to consider Leadbeater’s legislation properly. Nikki da Costa, a former director of legislative affairs in No 10 for the Conservatives, explains these concerns here.

In an interview with BBC Breakfast, Kim Leadbeater said she expected the vote her assisted dying bill to be “very close”.

MPs have been doing consultations with their constituents, holding events, holding round tables, doing huge amounts of amounts of research into this really important issue, and I think the vote will be very close.

Election Maps UK is keeping a tally. Here are their figures from yesterday. Their forecast is based on assumptions about how people who have not definitely declared an intention might vote, and so it should be treated with some caution.

In her Today programme interview Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP who tabled the assisted dying bill rejected claims from a former lord chief justice that the legislation is flawed because it does not explain how judges would deal with hearings where they would have to decide whether or not to approve an assisted dying application.

Asked about the comments from Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd in an interview on the same programme yesterday, Leadbeater said:

Judges do these sorts of cases in other very delicate matters all the time. So they look at things like turning off life support machines for terminally ill people.

So this is not going to be, it will be a new area of work for judges, but they are used to making these difficult and complex decisions and being part of this process.

Leadbeater also said the bill was supported by four former directors of public prosecutions (DPPs) “who have got huge amounts of legal experience between them”.

She was referring to Max Hill, Alison Saunders and Ken Macdonald, who have all spoken out recently in support of the bill, and to Keir Starmer, who voted for assisted dying in 2015, who has confirmed he remains in favour provided proper safeguards are in place, but who has said little about the Leadbeater bill because he wants the government to be seen as neutral.

Good morning. We have got PMQs later, which means party politics will probably dominate for much of the day in the chamber, but increasingly MPs are preoccupied with a free vote, non-partisan matter, the vote on the assisted dying bill on Friday. This morning there are at least two interesting developments on that story.

• Three former Conservative prime ministers are all opposed to the bill, the Telegraph is reporting. The paper has a quote from Liz Truss who says:

It is wrong in principle: organs of the state like the NHS and the judicial system should be protecting lives, not ending them.

No doubt, as we have seen in Canada, vulnerable people would be put under appalling pressure to end their lives early. The law would be ripe for being exploited by the unscrupulous. MPs should vote this terrible bill down and instead focus on improving health services.

The Telegraph has also been told that Boris Johnson does not support the legislation in its current form, and that Theresa May has not changed her mind since 2015, when she voted against an assisted dying bill. Normally three ex-PMs would be quite a lot, but these three only comprise half the Conservative party’s stock of former prime ministers and, as Sam Blewett writes in Politico’s London Playbook briefing, there are plenty of other ex-PMs yet to express a view.

Added to Gordon Brown’s intervention last week, that makes four former PMs opposed to a change in the law. There’s still no word from Rishi Sunak, David Cameron, Tony Blair or John Major … or really from Keir Starmer, for that matter.

• Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP who has tabled the private member’s bill being debated on Friday, has criticised the MPs who have called for the bill to be voted down to allow time for a full policy review. Four Labour backbenchers are among the seven MPs who have tabled an amendment to this effect. The amendment does not oppose assisted dying in principle. In an interview with the Today programme this morning, Leadbeater said the amendment was “disappointing” because, if passed, it would stop the Commons voting on the substance of the bill. She explained:

The route of the private member’s bill is absolutely the right route for taking this legislation through. That means that there can be a free vote by all MPs. It is not a government bill.

The government has a neutral position on this and, sadly, the amendment that a handful of MPs have put forward is disappointing in that the public clearly want this debate to take place, and I think we’ve got responsibilities as parliamentarians to make sure that that debate does take place.

Leadbeater also said she did not accept that argument that parliament needed more time to consider the issues before having a vote.

In terms of time and scrutiny, look, this is not a new debate. This debate has been going on for decades. It’s been going on, as you quite rightly said, particularly in recent years, in no short part to due to high-profile campaigners like Esther Rantzen.

But I think we can already see from what’s happened in the last few months, this bill will receive more scrutiny and more discussion and more debate, probably, than any piece of legislation.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: The Office for National Statistics publishes data about domestic abuse in England and Wales.

Morning: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, and Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, are due to visit a mental health charity in London.

Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.

After 12.30pm: Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, makes a statement to MPs about Vauxhall’s plans to close its van factory in Luton.

Afternoon: Starmer is due to do an AI-related visit in London.

3.30pm: David Lammy, the foreign secretary, gives evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee.

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