MPs took a massive, historic step as they accepted in principle that Britain will allow assisted dying.

It was a fascinating, moving debate, with the old-fashioned red versus blue tribal allegiances put to one side. MPs were given a free vote, which meant they escaped the powers of the whips and thought for themselves.

If only they could be so respectful and thoughtful every day.

It is an incredibly difficult issue, and in the end, the MPs were fairly evenly divided, 330 votes to 275, and those who voted in favour did so for all the right reasons. There is nothing wrong in wanting to ease the pain and suffering of your fellow human beings, and when one MP told how a pain-wracked constituent had gone to lie down on a railway track to end it all, you could see why emotion might win the day.

But the MPs who voted against also did so for the right reasons, because this Bill feels a bit cart before the horse. There is now going to be two years of working out how this is going to be into practice, who is going to be eligible to take the lethal cocktail, how they are going to be safeguarded and protected. It would have been preferable if this detail had been worked out before so that it could be coolly appraised.

And while resources are devoted to that detail and to building the new processes that are going to be needed in our hard-pressed health and justice departments, we fear that the state of palliative care and the hospice sector will continue to be allowed to drift.

In a perfect world, people should get all the pain relief they need so that they are not tempted by assisted dying. It is not a perfect world, but our palliative medicine is not good enough to prevent people facing an unenviable choice.

At least now, though, they are going to have a choice – let’s hope everyone will be able to make it freely.