MP Lauren Edwards has insisted that end-of-life care can be improved at the same time as legalising assisted dying, after Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he believes palliative care needs to be fixed first. Edwards, who has reintroduced the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill to Parliament for debate in September, said there is time to improve care before any assisted dying service would come into effect under her proposed law.
Four-year implementation period
Edwards said: “Improving social and palliative care and offering choice in the last weeks of a dying person’s life can and must go hand in hand. The Bill that has been before Parliament and thoroughly debated since October 2024 provides for a four-year implementation period. That means if my current Bill becomes law next year, we would have until 2031 to fix the status quo that Andy Burnham rightly says is broken and has let people down for too long. As he said today, the risks of failing to act are too great.”
The Bill ran out of time in the last session of Parliament earlier this year, having been first introduced in late 2024 by Kim Leadbeater. It passed two votes in the House of Commons – albeit the second one with a narrowed majority – but fell in the House of Lords after peers tabled hundreds of amendments and were accused of effectively talking it out.
Prime Minister's position
Mr Burnham will have a vote on the Bill when it returns to the Commons. His predecessor Sir Keir Starmer voted in favour of it previously. Asked about assisted dying, the PM said on Monday: “I take the view that that debate – and I don’t say that there shouldn’t be a debate at some point about those issues – personally, I think there’s something that needs to happen first. That is the fixing of the funding of palliative care and social care. I think it is very challenging to introduce that wider debate in a context of people not receiving that care and having the peace of mind about that care. That’s the way I kind of see this, and that’s the position that I will stick to.”
Ms Edwards said she believes there is “still widespread support amongst MPs (for the Bill) and a real desire to deal with this issue while fixing social care and palliative care at the same time”. She welcomed Mr Burnham’s “commitment to tackling the crisis in social care” and said everyone wants “to see better social, palliative and hospice care in every part of the country”.
Proponents' strategy
Pro-change campaigners have previously spoken of using the Parliament Act to get the Bill through. That Act, a rarely used piece of legislation, allows for Bills that have been backed by the Commons in two successive sessions but rejected by peers to pass into law without Lords approval.
In 2024, just before the first Commons vote on the assisted dying Bill, Mr Burnham – who was then mayor of Greater Manchester and therefore did not have a vote – told BBC Manchester he would “probably vote in favour of it”. When he was previously an MP he abstained from a 2015 vote on another Bill to legalise assisted dying because of concerns over safeguards and people feeling under pressure.
Burnham's personal evolution
But he said in his 2024 interview that he had “family experience in the nine years since that has changed my view”. He said: “I think we do allow people to suffer and families to suffer too much.” He caveated his support at the time as being for the principle of assisted dying and insisted he would want a requirement before any new law was implemented that hospices would be “properly funded and sorted out”. He has also spoken of his Catholic background and how “Catholic social teaching underpins my politics”, even though he is “not particularly religious” now. The Catholic Church is staunchly opposed to assisted dying legislation.
Mr Burnham’s latest statement on the issue chimes with several prominent parliamentarians, including Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey, who have called for a greater focus on improving palliative care before assisted dying is legalised.
Opposition view
Jess Asato, a Labour MP and opponent of the Bill, welcomed Mr Burnham’s position, saying: “There can be no meaningful choice and no dignity at the end of life if we don’t have a palliative care system that provides basic support for the vulnerable, and an affordable social care system that gives everyone dignity at the end of their lives. It’s really welcome that the PM recognises this and has committed the Government to fixing our broken social care system.”
Edwards added: “The Government has already made better palliative care provision a priority and it is very welcome that the new Prime Minister wants to take that even further. The evidence from around the world is that this can happen alongside providing the choice of an assisted death to that small minority for whom even the very best palliative care cannot relieve their suffering.”
