Andy Burnham will not vote on Assisted Dying Bill

The UK Prime Minister said he would abstain from voting on the Bill when it returns to the Commons on 11 September to avoid influencing the debate.

“There is no single right position and I have deep respect for MPs on all sides, and the expertise they bring to this debate,” the Prime Minister told Labour MPs in a letter.

Officials from No 10 said the Prime Minister did not wish to influence the process in either direction. Burnham warned his ministers – in a separate letter – against trying to influence the vote.

Lauren Edwards, the Labour MP for Rochester and Strood has tabled a version of the bill which is nearly identical to the Private Members Bill introduced in the last parliament by the Labour MP for Spen Valley, Kim Leadbeater. This ran out of time after peers tabled 1,200 amendments.

Edward’s Bill – like Leadbeater’s – proposes allowing adults who are terminally ill with less than six months to live to apply for assisted death, subject to the approval of two doctors and an expert panel.

On 28 August, the Government highlighted the pressure Assisted Dying may place on the disabled and ethnic minorities in an impact assessment paper on the Bill.

“Evidence suggests that disabled people may be more susceptible to feeling as though they are a burden on those around them… disabled people may feel subtle pressure due to attitudinal barriers or a lack of alternative appropriate services and support (for example, when accessing palliative care”, noted the paper.

It also mentioned that “recent discussion” had “considered” whether people from ethnic minority backgrounds may be “susceptible to coercion” for Assisted Dying.

“This could happen as a result of structural pressures such as high rates of poverty, poorer healthcare access, lower quality care and disproportionate levels of domestic abuse committed on Black and Asian women” the paper added.

The charity Right to Life said both warnings were “new” as they did not appear in the government’s 2025 impact assessment paper of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. Right to Life said that the government’s estimate of the number of deaths occurring via assisted dying in the tenth year of such legislation had increased by 60 per cent to 3,502 assisted deaths.

The auxiliary bishop of Birmingham, Timothy Menezes said a young, disabled parishioner had approached him after Mass to thank him for mentioning assisted dying. He told Menezes: “As a disabled young person myself, we feel very vulnerable. It is as though our life is not as valuable as others”.

Archbishop John Sherrington, Lead Bishop for Life Issues, urged people to contact their Members of Parliament using this link: https://righttolife.org.uk/Sept11vote or by using the postcards that will be delivered to parishes and contain a message to Members of Parliament from the disability network Not Dead Yet UK. Archbishop Sherrington also urged Catholics to continue to pray for their Members of Parliament before the Second Reading.

Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham termed the reintroduction of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill “a matter of grave concern for all of us.”

“The dignity of human life and the precious gift of human life is very important, and indeed the preservation of life is something which is at the heart of what we share in common as Christians, but with many other people of faith or of no faith at all”, he said on 6 August.

Archbishop John Wilson of Southwark called the proposed legislation “terrifying and deadly”, saying: “Whatever language those campaigning for assisted suicide may use, the terrible truth remains unchanged: should this proposal become law, grandparents, mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons will die believing there is no possible alternative, no chance of being cared for and loved until their natural death.”

Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury said in a letter urging parishioners to contact their MPs on Assisted Dying: “The sanctity of human life is one of the great gifts which Christianity brought to human civilisation”.

Bishop James Curry, the auxiliary bishop of Westminster said: “We want to have a society that assumes that we care for people and accompany them rather than treat them as a burden. Nobody wants to see a person suffer, but surely with the advances in medical care, we can allow someone to die with dignity…The Church has never said that we have to go to extraordinary means to keep someone alive.”

The Catholic Medical Association (CMA) said in a statement that it was “dismayed” by the re- introduction of the legislation. In a statement, it said that the CMA opposes the principle of legalising assisted suicide and this bill “alongside professional medical bodies including the Royal Colleges of Physicians, Pathologists and Psychiatrists, the Association for Palliative Medicine, and the British Geriatrics Society. The British Medical Association, too, voted recently to demand many safeguards that do not appear in the bill”.

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