Jewish MP and doctor leads fight to save assisting dying bill

The Jewish Labour MP and NHS doctor Peter Prinsley has emerged as a key figure in the fight to save the assisted dying bill, after coordinating a cross-party letter signed by more than 150 MPs urging Keir Starmer to prevent the legislation from running out of parliamentary time.

In the letter to the Prime Minister, Prinsley and his co-signatories wrote: “A small number of peers have been using procedural tactics to block the bill in the House of Lords and it now appears very likely that they will prevent it returning to the Commons before the end of this session.

“While we fully respect the government’s neutrality on the principle of assisted dying, we are confident that you would agree with us that we cannot be neutral on the fundamental democratic principle that it is for the elected House of Commons to decide on this matter.”

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, sponsored by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, would give terminally ill people in England and Wales with less than six months to live the right to an assisted death.

It now faces collapse after peers opposed to the legislation tabled more than 1,200 amendments, making it likely the bill will run out of time before the parliamentary session ends in May.

Supportive MPs, from across Labour, Conservative, Green and Lib Dem parties, are urging Starmer to guarantee the bill time in the next session following the King’s Speech.

If it clears the Commons again, supporters could invoke the Parliament Act to bypass further Lords obstruction — which would be the first time the 1911 Act has been used for a private member’s bill.

An NHS surgeon with decades of experience treating terminal patients, Prinsley has framed his support around compassion.

In November 2024, as MPs debated assisted dying, he told the Commons: “I asked the ENT nurse I’ve worked with for 20 years about assisted dying. She said it’s an essential change.

“No doubt in her mind, like me, she’s seen the unbearable distress that some head and neck cancers cause, and she knows of the very difficult deaths of some of our patients despite excellent palliative care.

“This is the experience which has changed my mind. When I was a young doctor, I thought it was unconscionable, but now I’m an old doctor, and I feel sure it’s the right change.”

The bill passed the House of Commons in November 2024 with a majority of just 23 votes.

Among Britain’s Jewish MPs and peers, the bill has divided opinion— with some reflecting longstanding tensions in Jewish ethics between pikuach nefesh, the duty to preserve life, and the imperative to relieve suffering.

Sources close to Prinsley, also an elected Deputy on the Board of Deputies, stress that his support for the bill is not in any way influenced by religious beliefs.

Parliamentary votes reveal no unified Jewish bloc with approximately 54 percent of Jewish MPs voting in favour in the Commons, 31 per cent against, and the remainder abstaining.

Senior Jewish MPs including Sarah Sackman, Ed Miliband, and Fabian Hamilton have all argued that dying patients deserve dignity and choice.

Rabbi Jonathan Romain, a leading progressive voice, has echoed that view, arguing that Jewish teaching allows for compassion when suffering becomes unbearable.

A leading voice against the bill in the Lords is Baroness Luciana Berger, the Labour peer and former MP, who has also invoked Jewish values in her opposition.

Berger has led a series of amendments in the Lords, citing pikuach nefesh to argue that vulnerable people must be protected from coercion or undue pressure.

“My deepest concern with this bill is its failure to provide adequate safeguards,” she told the Jewish Chronicle, adding that Jewish values are at the heart of her stand as a leading adversary of the assisted dying bill.

She insists her push for additional scrutiny is a principled effort to protect life, not an attempt to filibuster — though critics have accused her of exactly that.

A source close to Prinsley told Jewish News he “of course respects Luciana’s views, but would caution how members would impose their religious beliefs on the democratic process.”

Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis has also been among senior voices to warn against the legislation, writing to MPs to caution about the “immeasurable pressure” that could be placed on terminally ill people.

Starmer, himself a supporter of assisted dying, has so far declined to intervene directly in the parliamentary process.

“It is a matter of conscience,” the Prime Minister said earlier this month.

“It is for parliament to decide the passage of the legislation and any changes. Scrutiny is a matter for the other place. We have a responsibility to make sure any legislation is workable, effective and enforceable.”