British government admits that disabled people may face ‘subtle pressure’ to choose assisted suicide, if bill passes

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

John Pring reported for the Disability New Service on September 3, 2026 that the British government admitted that disabled people may face 'subtle pressure' to choose assisted suicide if the assisted suicide bill becomes law. Pring reported that:

The impact assessment was published by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) last Thursday (August 28).

The assessment’s publication came on the same day that prime minister Andy Burnham wrote to Labour MPs to say he would not vote on the bill on 11 September because he did not want to “unduly influence the debate as prime minister”.

He had already told the media that he believed the funding crisis in palliative and social care should be fixed before there is any debate about legalising assisted dying.

And he has now also told ministers that as the government will remain neutral on the bill, they should “avoid being part of the public debate, and should not express views” about the implications of the bill for their own departments.

Pring reported that the government published three assessments of the assisted suicide bill on August 28.

On Thursday (28 August), DHSC and MoJ published three key documents that assess the “potential impacts” of the bill.

Their equality impact assessment of the bill accepts that disabled people “may be more susceptible to feeling as though they are a burden on those around them”, a key concern raised by campaigners opposed to legalisation.

The impact assessment says that this pressure “is not necessarily felt or applied by other people” but that disabled people “may feel subtle pressure due to attitudinal barriers or a lack of alternative appropriate services and support”, such as with the lack of access to palliative care.

It says these feelings of being a burden could also be caused by “structural pressures such as neglect, poverty and difficult living conditions”, while disabled people are twice as likely as non-disabled people to be victims of domestic abuse such as coercive behaviour.

And the equality impact assessment warns that factors such as high rates of poverty, poorer access to healthcare, lower quality care, and disproportionate levels of domestic abuse of black and Asian women could cause disproportionate numbers of minority ethnic people to choose an assisted death “to avoid financial hardship or escape abuse”.

It also highlights how older people, who are likely to be the main recipients of assisted dying, are “often dependent on those who care for them”, which puts them at increased risk of abuse and pressure to choose an assisted death.

And the assessment reports findings by the UN in 2021 that older people “may feel subtly pressured to end their lives prematurely”.

On November 29, 2024; the UK House of Commons voted 330 to 275 at second reading to support Kim Leadbeater's assisted suicide bill, a bill that was fatally flawed and died in the British House of Lords.

On June 17, 2026 Labour MP Lauren Edwards introduced a similar version to the Leadbeater bill that is scheduled to be voted-on at second reading on September 11, 2026.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is convinced that Edwards introduced a nearly identical assisted suicide bill as the Leadbeater bill in order to invoke The Parliament Acts, which allows the House of Commons to forgo approval from the House of Lords when passing two nearly identical bills within consecutive parliamentary sessions.