The Prime Minister Says He Won't Vote on the Assisted Dying Law — Here's What's Going On

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has told Labour MPs he will not vote on a new assisted dying bill when it comes back to Parliament, doing something his predecessor, Sir Keir Starmer, did not.

In a letter to Labour MPs on Friday, Burnham said his job as prime minister is to carry out whatever Parliament decides on assisted dying, not to shape that decision. He said he would not vote at the first stage of the bill's progress — known as Second Reading, where MPs decide whether a bill should continue — because he did not want to sway the discussion and wanted colleagues to know it was a genuinely free vote. He said the government would stay officially neutral.

The decision is different from how Starmer handled the previous assisted dying bill. Starmer voted in favour of it when he was prime minister but did not campaign for it. Burnham has gone further by not voting at all.

MPs are likely to debate and vote on the bill in about two weeks. The proposed law is the same one Parliament looked at last year, which MPs approved by 330 votes to 275. But it then got stuck in the House of Lords — the upper chamber of Parliament that reviews and can revise bills — because so many amendments were proposed that it ran out of time.

The bill would allow adults over 18 who are expected to die within six months to be given help to end their own life, with certain safeguards in place. It applies to England and Wales only. Assisted dying is a devolved issue, meaning Scotland and Northern Ireland make their own laws through their own separate parliaments — Holyrood in Scotland and Stormont in Northern Ireland.

Burnham wrote that there is no single right answer on assisted dying and that it is a deeply personal debate. He said he has his own views but that it is for Parliament to decide.

Those views are publicly known. When he was mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham said he supported assisted dying in principle. In June, he said it would be hard to put assisted dying into practice before social care and palliative care — the support given to people with serious or terminal illnesses — were improved. On 29 July 2026, he told BBC Breakfast that funding for palliative and social care should be "fixed" before assisted dying is considered.

His comments at the end of July, reported by the Financial Times, reduced Labour MPs' hopes of bringing the bill back. The bill's return to Parliament now gives those MPs their chance, but without the visible support of the prime minister.

The broader picture here is one of careful political positioning. Burnham is not opposing the bill, nor is he telling Labour MPs they must abstain. He is simply stepping away from the vote himself. That keeps the government out of what is seen as a matter of personal conscience while leaving the way open for MPs who want to push the bill forward. It also avoids the awkward situation of a prime minister voting one way while his government officially has no position, which was the slightly contradictory stance Starmer took.

For MPs working on the bill, the practical result is that the prime minister's office will neither cheerlead nor stand in the way. The government has promised to implement whatever Parliament decides. Ministers will not campaign against the bill, but they will not throw their weight behind it either. Whether that neutrality lasts through later stages of the process and any opposition in the Lords is the unanswered question.

Burnham's view that social care funding should come first also points to a potential sticking point. If the bill gets past its first vote, the government will face pressure to show real progress on palliative care funding before the bill goes further. MPs who support the bill will say both can happen at the same time; Burnham's comments suggest he thinks the order matters.

The vote in two weeks will be the first real test of whether the bill can build momentum again after it stalled in the Lords. Last year's 330-275 result suggests enough MPs support it, but free votes are hard to predict, and the months since will have changed some MPs' minds. Burnham's decision not to vote removes one supporter that Starmer would have provided, though as prime minister his influence on other MPs goes well beyond a single vote.

The bill covers England and Wales. Any change in the law would not apply in Scotland or Northern Ireland, where their own parliaments would need to pass separate legislation if they wanted to do the same.