So, Labour MP Lauren Edwards – who, as noted on this blog last month, came second in the recent Private Members’ Bill (PMB) ballot – has decided to re-introduce Kim Leadbeater’s deeply flawed and defeated NHS-assisted suicide Bill to the House of Commons. Announcing the somewhat surprising decision on her website yesterday, Edwards said “this is a rare opportunity to present legislation that can make a real difference not just to my constituents in Rochester and Strood, but also for the country.”

We don’t know whether Edwards has been infected by the reported frenzy inside Downing Street to somehow secure Sir Keir ‘you’re fired!’ Starmer a ‘legacy’ before he makes way for Andy Burnham or Wes Streeting, or has simply seized a flukey opportunity to make herself better known beyond her constituency (not difficult). But, either way, her bold if not hubristic move seems destined to end in disappointment.

Despite Kim Leadbeater having ‘won’ the coveted top slot in the 2024 PMB Ballot, her flawed and therefore divisive NHS-assisted suicide Bill would most likely have died the lonely and painful but mercifully swift death of nearly all PMBs (other than those handed out by ministers), had Starmer’s personal commitment to the NHS bumping off a few grannies not ensured his Government’s supposed ‘neutrality’. This enabled the Bill to stagger on to the House of Lords, where in April it was belatedly put out of our misery by the admirable Tanni Grey-Thompson and others.

Unfortunately for Edwards, the integrity-challenged Starmer may well not be Prime Minister by the time her Bill comes up for its Second Reading, in September or October, and is even less likely to be Prime Minister by the time it reaches its final stages in the Commons, in early 2027. So, as Wes Streeting is opposed to NHS-assisted suicide, and Andy Burnham is characteristically ambivalent on the matter, it seems unlikely her PMB will benefit, as Leadbeater’s PMB unquestionably did, from government ‘neutrality’.

Indeed, it seems much more likely that, come late 2026 or early 2027, Prime Minister Andy Burnham or Prime Minister Wes Streeting will (sensibly) decree that spending hundreds of millions of pounds on establishing an NHS service to bump off a few grannies is simply not a priority for his new government.

As another Labour MP (and former health minister), Ashley Dalton, said to the Guardian yesterday: “We have debated this deeply divisive and flawed Bill for over a year, and supporters have refused to listen or to make the necessary changes. We should not be using more of our limited time and political capital on something that simply isn’t safe or a priority for the people who put us in power.”

Furthermore, as noted on this blog in April, unlike Leadbeater, who benefited from a two-year parliamentary session, Edwards will have only one year to get her PMB through Parliament. And there is little if any reason to think opponents of her PMB in the House of Lords will be persuaded by her bold assertion that “it is a fundamental democratic principle that the elected chamber, the House of Commons, should decide what does and does not become law in this country.” 

Whatever, Edwards and the 19 other lucky ‘winners’ of the PMB Ballot will present their Bills to the House of Commons on Wednesday.