Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said on Wednesday he is “confident” that the assisted suicide bill is workable and can be applied if it becomes law.
Starmer was asked by reporters if the will of parliament must be implemented and whether a budget for the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill can be found.
He responded: “It is my responsibility to make sure the Bill is workable, and that means workable in all its aspects.
“I’m confident we’ve done that preparation.”
The prime minister made the remarks after Health Secretary Wes Streeting said last week that there was no budget for a medically-assisted dying service.
Streeting said in a June 21 Facebook post that setting up this service will “take time and money that is in short supply.”
“There isn’t a budget for this. Politics is about prioritising. It is a daily series of choices and trade-offs. I fear we’ve made the wrong one,” he said.
On June 20, MPs voted by a narrow majority of 23 in favour of a bill to legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales.
The bill has now gone to the House of Lords for further scrutiny before it can receive Royal Assent and become law.
44 Percent Worried About Palliative Care
The legislation would allow terminally ill adults with less than six months to live the right to apply for assisted suicide, subject to assessment by two doctors and a panel made up of a senior legal figure, a social worker, and a psychiatrist.
Streeting was one of the first ministers to voice personal objections to a change in the law when the bill was introduced to Parliament last year.
Among his concerns was the lack of adequate and universal end-of-life care, which he said meant those facing terminal illnesses would not have a real choice between assisted suicide and palliative care.
According to a recent poll, the public shares some of the minister’s concerns.
A King’s College London (KCL) survey conducted by Focaldata and published on Tuesday found that 44 percent of respondents are worried about the quality of end-of-life care in the UK.
Four in 10 said they did not know how to access palliative care in their area.
KCL professor of palliative care Katherine Sleeman said: “As a clinician, I see first-hand the benefits that palliative care delivers for patients and their families. As a researcher, I know that too many people are not getting the care that could benefit them, and that there are huge inequalities in accessing high quality care.”
Palliative care specialists who have given evidence to parliament as part of the bill’s scrutiny process have said that access to end-of-life care is currently insufficient.
This includes President of the Association of Palliative Medicine, Sarah Cox, who told the bill’s Commons committee in January that 25 percent of people who die in the UK do not have the palliative care they need, estimating that figure to be around 100,000 people a year.
Starmer’s Position
The proposed legislation is a Private Member’s Bill (PMB)—not a government bill—which is sponsored by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater.
The government is neutral on the bill and MPs have a free vote, meaning they can support or oppose the bill based on their conscience, rather than having to vote along party lines.
Several previous PMBs have attempted—and failed—to change the law, including one introduced in the Commons in 2015 and another in the Lords in 2021.
The issue came to prominence again last year, when Dame Esther Rantzen—the former television presenter and founder of charity Childline—began campaigning for a change in the law after she revealed she has stage four cancer and had joined the Swiss assisted suicide clinic, Dignitas.
Starmer is open about his personal preference for a change in the law, with him voting for Leadbeater’s bill and having backed the 2015 attempt to legalise assisted suicide.
In March 2024—before winning the July 2024 election—Starmer told Rantzen in a phone conversation aired by ITV News that he was “personally in favour of changing the law” and that if he became prime minister, he would make time for debate and allow a free vote on the issue.
When Leadbeater announced plans to publish her PMB in October, Starmer said he was pleased to be able to make good on his promise to Rantzen, confirming that the government would remain neutral on the matter.
PA Media contributed to this report.
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