The Guardian has reported on a leaked Labour policy note that has raised serious new questions about the Government’s claimed neutrality on assisted suicide. Currently, Kim Leadbeater MP’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill has been spun as a purely backbench initiative, though this recent release has brought that into doubt.
According to the document, drafted in November 2023 while Labour was still in opposition, party strategists explicitly discussed introducing assisted suicide via a private member’s bill. The supposed attraction was not only that such a route would allow a so-called free vote, but that it would still let ministers exert “heavy influence” over the final law while avoiding direct ownership of a manifesto commitment. The paper proposed limiting eligibility to mentally competent terminally ill adults with a prognosis of less than six months, a description strikingly similar to the Leadbeater bill now before the Lords.
That context matters. The Government has repeatedly insisted it is neutral on the substance of assisted suicide, even while providing technical support to ensure the bill is workable, a role it says it must play with private member’s bills. But this leak suggests that Labour was thinking through, in advance, how to shape and steer legislation of this kind through the private member’s bill process, including by working with advocacy groups and civil servants. If true, the bill looks much less like a spontaneous parliamentary initiative, and much more like policy by the back door.
Labour sources opposed to assisted suicide have described the plan as a shadow process, developed outside the manifesto and without consultation with MPs or the wider party. Leadbeater’s office has flatly denied any prior coordination with Number 10 or the Labour leadership before she took up the issue and maintains that policy decisions have been hers and Lord Falconer’s alone.
The leak lands amid mounting procedural controversy in the Lords. More than 1,000 amendments have been tabled, and supporters of assisted suicide have accused opponents of filibustering. The Government have therefore given extra sitting days to get the bill through committee stage before the spring 2026 session deadline, adding to the sense that official machinery is being used to keep the legislation alive.
SPUC’s CEO, John Deighan, says, “If this leak is true it’s a further damning indictment on the Government’s supposed “neutrality.” It’s important that any radical changes to law relating to life and death are debated with maximum clarity. If the Government is embarrassed about publicly supporting assisted suicide, then they must ask why. We hope that this will be straw that breaks the camel’s back, and that the House of Lords will kill this evil Bill once and for all.”
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