UK MP reintroduces same failed and 'deeply flawed' assisted suicide bill

(Right to Life UK) Lauren Edwards has published her assisted suicide Bill in near-identical form to Kim Leadbeater’s deeply flawed and unsafe Bill from the previous parliamentary session, retaining dozens of serious flaws identified by Royal Colleges, professional bodies, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and disability, mental health and domestic abuse charities. 

By publishing a near-identical Bill to the much-criticised version that failed in the previous parliamentary session, the Bill’s supporters have made clear their highly controversial intention to use the Parliament Acts to bypass the House of Lords to force the Bill into law should the Lords fail to pass the Bill again. 

The ability to use the Parliament Acts not only requires the Bill to be brought back in a near-identical form, but also means that it could not be amended in the House of Commons, making it impossible for MPs to amend the Bill in the House of Commons to fix the dozens of widely-publicised and serious flaws in the Bill.

New assisted suicide Bill at Westminster

"An uphill battle"

The Second Reading vote on the revived Bill on 11 September will now be a referendum on the use of the Parliament Acts for a controversial Private Members’ Bill, as well as on the deeply flawed and unsafe Bill to which MPs will not be able to make amendments. This means September’s vote will be a very different proposition to the previous Second Reading vote on Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill.

As only 12 MPs need to change their minds for the new assisted suicide Bill to fall, and since seven MPs from Labour, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats who had backed the previous Bill at Third Reading have already said they do not support plans to force it into law via the Parliament Acts / bringing back the Bill in this new Parliamentary session, Lauren Edwards now faces an uphill battle to pass the Second Reading vote on 11 September.  

"Extraordinary" use of the Parliament Acts

The Parliament Acts have only been used a handful of times (seven times since 1911) for Government legislation, and never for a Private Members’ Bill like Lauren Edwards’ assisted suicide Bill.

It would be extraordinary for them to be invoked for a Bill that passed the Commons by a narrow margin, with fewer than 50% of MPs voting for it at Third Reading, and which was not in the Government’s manifesto. 

The Bill has been published on the day MPs leave Westminster for the summer recess, giving MPs only nine sitting days to consider the Bill before the Second Reading debate on Friday 11 September.

Dozens of major flaws in the Bill

In October last year, a House of Lords Select Committee took evidence from the relevant Royal Colleges, professional bodies, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and mental health and domestic abuse charities on the Bill that has now been brought back in near-identical form by Lauren Edwards. None would confirm that the Bill is safe, and neither would Government ministers when the Committee asked them to.

Among those raising concerns about the dozens of flaws in the BIll were:

• The Royal College of Physicians

• The Royal College of Psychiatrists

• The Association for Palliative Medicine / CLADD Group

• The British Association of Social Workers

• Standing Together Against Domestic Abuse

• The Royal College of Pathologists

Changing his tune?

Long-time advocate of assisted suicide and the sponsor of Kim Leadbeater’s Bill in the previous session in the Lords, Lord Falconer, himself conceded that a number of changes are needed to make the Bill safer.

He said that “[The NHS clause] is currently very wide, and as the deregulation committee said, needs to be limited” and he admitted the Bill has poor protections for young adults who “may be more emotionally impulsive and more easily influenced”.

He also raised specific concerns about the fact that suicidal patients detained in care homes or hospitals for their own safety may still be eligible under the Bill he sponsored. Falconer recognised too that a person who wants to end his or her own life should be asked for their motivation since “it might throw some light on circumstances that suggest classic coercion”.

Falconer also acknowledged legitimate concerns surrounding online advertising for assisted suicide, the serious dangerpresented by the possibility of remote consultations prior to assisted suicide, and that there should be some means for recording the reasons for withdrawals from assisted suicide.

However, with the proposed Parliament Acts route, even such flaws in the Bill, which are acknowledged by supporters of the assisted suicide Bill, cannot be addressed by the House of Commons. MPs would need to push through essentially the same flawed, unsafe Bill which left the Commons in the previous parliamentary session.

PM Andy Burnham likely to oppose revived Bill

The Edwards Bill is also likely to struggle without the support of the incoming Prime Minister, Andy Burnham. Keir Starmer was well-known for his consistent support for assisted suicide and the pre-election promise he gave to celebrity campaigner Esther Rantzen to make time for a debate on it. 

However, in contrast, The New Statesman reported that Andy Burnham may oppose a new assisted suicide Bill, and would not welcome its return.

The article stated that, should Burnham become Prime Minister, “it is hard to see a world in which he would welcome this Labour Party-dividing legislation”.

Burnham has said he supports the principle of assisted suicide, but has set a precondition that hospices must be “properly funded and sorted out” before any law change.

He previously stated, “[In] terms of the implementation of it, I would say there should be a kind of requirement that the hospices of this country get properly funded and sorted out before that law change comes in”.

He added that palliative care is not “in the strong position it should be in”, stating that, “Consequently, you can’t have this law change with an underfunded hospice movement”.

Given the end-of-life care crisis in this country, Burnham’s precondition, that palliative care is properly funded before assisted suicide is introduced, has plainly not been met. It therefore seems unlikely he could support the revived assisted suicide Bill.

Burnham’s position is similar to that of Wes Streeting, the former Health Secretary who came out in support of Burnham’s bid for leadership. Streeting is also not opposed to the principle of assisted suicide, but has said that end-of-life care is not in a condition where people at the end of their life would have genuine freedom to choose an assisted death. On this basis, the former Health Secretary opposed the Leadbeater Bill at both Second and Third Readings. 

Bill's return will divide Labour Party at worst possible time

The return of the assisted suicide Bill will distract Labour from focusing on core priorities, undermining any attempted political reset planned by incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

After Lauren Edwards announced she would bring the Bill back, several Labour MPs took to social media to point out that bringing back the assisted suicide Bill would fuel the flames of current tensions in the Labour Party, causing further division, at the worst possible time. These MPs include Adam Jogee, David Smith, Rupa Huq and Kirsteen Sullivan. Other MPs, including Ashley Dalton, Emma Lewell, Antonia Bance, Allison Gardner, Daniel Francis, Uma Kumaran, Ian Byrne, Scott Arthur and Andrew Pakes, alongside Labour Peers and former MPs Luciana Berger and Barbara Keeley, all also expressed serious concern about the return of the Bill.

Still more Labour MPs reposted the concerns of their colleagues, including Chi Onwurah, Jess Asato, Mary Glindon, Melanie Ward and Patrick Hurley, as well as former Labour rebel Karl Turner, who predicted defeat for a new Bill, making the division this Bill will cause pointless. Former Labour MPs Diane Abbott and Rosie Duffield also publicly opposed the return of the Bill.

Given the ongoing turmoil in the Labour Party and the fact that 42% of Labour MPs (160, including several Cabinet Ministers) voted against the Bill at Third Reading in 2025, many MPs will be dismayed at the return of a controversial Bill that will cause division and distract from other priorities, while also leading to a backlash from constituents, especially when it will likely fail. 

A similar Bill has recently been rejected in Scotland, where, strikingly, 85% of Labour MSPs (17/20) opposed the Bill. Many new intake Labour MPs likely voted for the Westminster Bill previously because of the support of Keir Starmer early on in their parliamentary careers.

In a recent lead article, The Times newspaper described plans to invoke the Parliament Acts for the assisted suicide Bill as “a constitutional outrage” and “unconscionable”. The Times View also defended the House of Lords’ “detailed scrutiny” of the previous Bill, which has been smeared by Bill supporters, as doing “the country a service”. Bill supporters have claimed that a small group of Peers blocked the Bill in the House of Lords and have used this narrative to justify the return of the Bill.

The reality is that over 140 Peers actively opposed the Bill in the House of Lords, including leading experts, while numerous Royal Colleges, professional bodies and groups representing vulnerable people expressed their concerns with the Bill at a House of Lords select committee in the autumn, as outlined above.

Poll shows no public mandate for reviving failed Bill

An MRP poll of over 10,000 people, the largest public poll conducted on assisted suicide since Kim Leadbeater’s Bill was introduced in October 2024, has shown that there is no mandate from the public to revive Leadbeater’s failed assisted suicide bill and circumvent the House of Lords to push it into law.

Full details on this polling, including constituency-level results for Lauren Edwards’ constituency, are available in this press release from The Other Half here.

Alisdair Hungerford-Morgan, CEO of the charity Right To Life UK, which campaigns against assisted suicide and in support of better access to palliative care, said:

Lauren Edwards has chosen to bring back a Bill that is near-identical in form to Kim Leadbeater’s deeply flawed and unsafe Bill from the previous parliamentary session. 

The Bill retains dozens of serious flaws identified by Royal Colleges, professional bodies, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and disability, mental health and domestic abuse charities.

The near-identical Bill makes it clear that assisted suicide campaigners are paving the way for the highly controversial use of the Parliament Acts to bypass the House of Lords to force it into law. Utilising the Parliament Acts route would mean it would be impossible for MPs to amend the Bill in the House of Commons to fix the dozens of serious flaws in the Bill....

Read the entire press release at Right to Life UK.