Health Secretary Will Vote Against Assisted Suicide Bill

Members of Distant Voices, Christian Concern, the Christian Medical Fellowship, and SPUC gather to protest against the assisted suicide bill in Westminster, London, England, on Oct. 16, 2024. Lucy North/PA Wire

Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said he will vote against the assisted suicide bill because end-of-life care in the UK is not good enough to give the terminally ill a “real choice.”

Streeting also said he was worried about vulnerable ill people being “coerced into taking this route” to end their own lives.

The minister confirmed his stance on assisted suicide after media reports from last week revealed he had told a colleague during a private meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party that he planned to vote against Kim Leadbeater’s Private Members’ Bill, which will be debated on Nov. 29.

Explaining his position, Streeting told Good Morning Britain on Tuesday: “I’ve come down this time on voting against the bill on the basis that I worry about palliative care—end-of-life care—not being good enough to give people a real choice.

“I worry about the risk of people being coerced into taking this route towards the end of their life.

“And I also worry—even where you’ve got really loving families who are very supportive—about those people who think they’ve almost got a duty to die to relieve the burden on their loved ones.”

Streeting’s openness about his position comes after Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said she would not be backing Leadbeater’s bill, on religious grounds.

Last week, Mahmood told The Times she had voted against a similar 2015 bill which was later defeated, saying, “As a Muslim, I have an unshakeable belief in the sanctity and the value of human life.”

“I don’t think that death is a service that the state should be offering,” she added.

Labour MP David Smith also came out against assisted suicide, publishing a statement to social media platform X on Monday saying he believed “there is no legislation on this issue that can provide safeguards sufficient to stop unjust, unnecessary and premature deaths,” citing other countries around the world—such as Belgium and Canada—where restrictions on who can access assisted suicide have been eroded.

Leadbeater put forward the second of two Private Members’ Bills on legalising assisted suicide in England and Wales, the other being Lord Charles Falconer’s in the House of Lords, which will also be debated next month.

High-Profile Support for Bill

Streeting’s previously unconfirmed comments had prompted criticism from Dame Esther Rantzen, the Childline founder and assisted suicide campaigner who revealed last year that she has stage four lung cancer.

Rantzen told GMB last week that she was “sad” when she had heard Streeting, “a very influential man,” would be voting against the bill.

GMB played the clip to Streeting, which contained Rantzen’s erroneous claim that as a minister, he was ignoring the government’s advice to stay neutral.

“The government is neutral. Ministers are able to vote however we want—we’re subject to a free vote,” Streeting said.

He added that while he respected Rantzen and his Labour colleague, Leadbeater, “I also have to think about the people that don’t have a prominent voice in this debate and whose interests might not be well served by this legislation.”

By comparison, Rantzen had a personal guarantee from then-Leader of the Opposition Sir Keir Starmer that he would hold a free vote on assisted suicide if he became prime minister, with the Labour leader publicly stating he favoured a change in the law.

Vote Against in Labour’s Wales

Streeting observed that the debate on assisted suicide was not divided neatly along party lines, “and that’s why I think the prime minister was absolutely right to say that this is a free vote, MPs should vote according to their judgment and their consciences, and that the government will remain neutral. Even as ministers take their own positions, the government doesn’t have a view.”

He added, “Ultimately it'll be for parliament to decide. As a government, we will implement whatever parliament decides.”

Last week, a vote in the Labour-led Welsh parliament rejected a motion in support of assisted suicide, which would have also endorsed a change in the law at Westminster.

The motion was rejected with opposition coming from Labour, Plaid Cymru, the Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats.

Major figures within the Welsh government also voted against it, notably First Minister Eluned Morgan and Secretary for Health and Social Care Jeremy Miles, who said if Westminster passed any laws allowing assisted suicide, it would have “huge ramifications” for Wales.

While the Senedd cannot change the law itself—that power resting with Westminster—the vote demonstrated a symbolic rejection of legalising assisted suicide in Wales.