A bill to legalise assisted suicide for people with incurable or terminal diseases won a token second reading in the House of Lords last night in the face of heart-felt opposition which will block further progress, at least for now.

More than 50 peers on all sides took part in the debate, begun by the South African-born lawyer and crossbench peer Lord Joffe, who admitted that the seven hours of discussion showed how divisive the issue was in all parties.

With the Conservatives passionately opposing the patient (assisted dying) bill, the government's health spokeswoman, Lady Andrews, said ministers were "listening intently" to the wider public debate without yet adopting a position.

Four out of five voters back reform, Lord Joffe told the peers. He was backed by Lady Warnock, the academic authority on medical ethics, who said such matters should not be left to doctors alone.

But ministers have no current plans to change the law in this area. They are concentrating on improving palliative care for the terminally ill, often a low budget priority for NHS trusts, which rely on the charitable hospice movement.

Disability groups and some churches believe that reform would weaken the protection now enjoyed by the elderly and lead to pressure on them.

"No one wants to be a burden to those one loves. A sense of a duty to die is all too easy to create and all too difficult to detect," Lady Finlay of Llandaff said.

The bill proposes to allow allow voluntary euthanasia to those "suffering unbearably", under strict conditions and safeguards.

It has won support from right-to-die campaigners, including the widower of Diane Pretty, the woman with motor neurone disease who lost her high court fight to have her husband help her end her life.

At present those who assist suicides can be jailed for up to 14 years.

Lord Joffe stressed that there would be stringent safeguards to protect the rights and interests of the most vulnerable, and predicted that unless the law was updated more and more people would go abroad - like Reginald Crew, who flew to Switzerland - to end their lives in countries without those protections in place.

Up to 26,000 people a year were already being helped to die by their doctors.

"We have laws in place which are clearly out of tune with the views of the majority of the population. They are laws which cause profound and unnecessary suffering to many people," he said.

Critics called the bill "a licence to kill".