Rochester residents, disability charities and more gather to deliver community petition to Lauren Edwards MP, signed by over 550 against bringing back “assisted dying” bill

8th June 2026

• Photos which can be used for press articles are available here.

• Representatives from disability groups, women’s interest groups, eating disorder charities and local residents gather at the MP’s constituency office to deliver a strong community message against bringing back the “assisted dying” bill

• Rochester and Strood MP Lauren Edwards, who was successful in the recent House of Commons Private Members’ Bill Ballot, has a “once-in-a-century opportunity” to propose a law change on behalf of Rochester and Strood.

• Edwards is coming under pressure from national “assisted dying” campaigners to reintroduce Kim Leadbeater’s controversial failed assisted dying Bill - but a landmark new MRP POLL shows assisted dying to be the lowest-ranking voter priority in the Rochester and Strood constituency.

ROCHESTER (6 June 2026) - Rochester and Strood residents and campaigners assembled outside the office of Lauren Edwards MP on Saturday 6th June to hand in a petition signed by over 550 constituents urging the MP not to reintroduce the “assisted dying” bill in Parliament, but to take up instead an issue that would command the support of and benefit the whole constituency (full text of the petition is included at the end of this press note).

Last month, Edwards became one of seven MPs across the country to be guaranteed time in the House of Commons chamber for a vote on a legislative proposal of her choice.

National pro-“assisted dying” campaign groups have been lobbying the MP to use this once-in-a-century opportunity for the Rochester and Strood constituency to reintroduce the “assisted dying” bill, which failed to pass through Parliament last year.

But a new MRP poll shows that legalising assisted dying came rock bottom of a list of Rochester and Strood voters’ priorities that they would want their MP to focus on if they had the opportunity to make a law change over the next year.

Only 7% of Edwards’ constituents included it in their top three priorities for what they would want her to prioritise (see full details from polling at the end of this press release).

The local petition against the return of the bill has been organised by The Other Half, a women's advocacy group, which says it is concerned that reintroducing the Bill would lead to grave risks for vulnerable women, including those experiencing coercion or domestic abuse.

Eating disorder charities have added their voice to these concerns. Representatives from “Eat, Breathe, Thrive” have pointed out that the assisted dying bill contained an “anorexia loophole” that would have qualified patients to receive lethal drugs on the NHS if they refused to eat, or refused other life-saving treatment.

The Other Half were joined on the constituency office doorstep by representatives from Not Dead Yet UK, which is a grassroots-led organisation of disabled people who campaign against assisted suicide on the basis that a change in the law will have a disproportionate impact on the way that disabled people are valued and supported within society. They submitted their own letter of concern to Edwards.

Ms Edwards is likely to announce her decision on which Bill to bring forward within the next week.

For further information, interview requests:

• EMAIL: press@theotherhalf.uk

• PHONE: +447932512279

For Not Dead Yet UK media enquiries:

• EMAIL: hello@notdeadyetuk.org

• PHONE: +447715760367

COMMENTS:

Fiona MacKenzie, CEO, The Other Half, said:

“More than 550 people in Rochester and Strood have already called on Lauren Edwards to use this opportunity to bring forward a bill that unites and benefits their entire community, rather than bringing back the divisive assisted dying Bill.

“The petition coincides with the release of the largest poll on the issue of assisted dying since Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying Bill was introduced.

“The constituency-level findings for Rochester and Strood make clear that Lauren Edwards has no local mandate to use her ballot opportunity to bring back the assisted dying Bill. Legalising assisted dying is bottom of a list of priorities local voters want their MP to focus on if she has the opportunity to make a law change over the next year, as Lauren Edwards now does.”

Mike Smith, spokesperson for Not Dead Yet UK said:

“The assisted suicide bill poses serious risks to many disabled people all across the UK. People supporting this legislation don’t seem to care that disabled people keep telling Not Dead Yet that they are really scared. It’s hard to manage without good social care and a decent quality of life, and the draining fight we must have to access them. We know from other countries that disabled people have chosen assisted suicide simply because they couldn’t access a meaningful life. Worse still, some doctors have suggested it.

The Leadbeater Bill ran out of time during the previous parliamentary term because it was too flawed to be fixed - the safeguarding within the Bill simply wasn’t good enough. Bringing back the same bill won’t change that. Additionally, a Private Members Bill is the wrong way to bring about such an important change in the way that doctors should be working to protect us.

Decent social care, housing and access to good palliative care must come before there is a change in the law; otherwise any choice will not be a genuine choice. We strongly urge Lauren Edwards to use this important opportunity she has to improve people’s lives, not hasten their deaths. A Labour MP should understand that protecting those with a less-heard voice is essential in a just and fair society.”

Chelsea Roff from eating disorder charity Eat, Breathe, Thrive, said:

“When Kim Leadbeater’s assisted death Bill passed the House of Commons, supporters apparently assured MPs that what had become known as the “anorexia loophole” would be dealt with in the Lords.

The loophole concerns the Bill’s definition of terminal illness and the possibility that people with severe anorexia could qualify for assisted death after becoming physically compromised through self-starvation. In three American states, women with anorexia have already been deemed “terminally ill” and died under similar laws.

If MPs now attempt to revive the flawed Bill through the Parliament Acts, they will also be reviving the same dangerous loophole that has already cost women like this their lives…And if legislation allowing people with eating disorders to end their lives on the NHS eventually passes here too, no MP will be able to claim they were not warned.”

Full text of petition - signed by 568

Dear Lauren,

We, the undersigned constituents who live in Rochester and Strood, ask you not to use your Private Members’ Bill ballot slot to bring back the divisive assisted dying Bill, which we believe would put some of our most vulnerable people at risk.

Instead, we ask you to use this exciting opportunity to bring forward a Bill that would benefit and have the support of our whole constituency.

New MRP polling by Whitestone Insight for the think tank The Other Half shows that Rochester and Strood constituents do not want you to bring back Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying Bill. Among Rochester and Strood residents, legalising assisted dying came at the bottom of 10 possible priorities for their MP to focus on if they have an opportunity to change the law in the coming year, with just 7% of constituents selecting this as one of their top three priorities, while only 8% would support pushing a Bill into law if it had not been approved by both Houses of Parliament, e.g. via the Parliament Acts as being proposed by assisted dying campaigners.

At this time of political instability, bringing back the assisted dying Bill would be a distraction from the challenges - and opportunities - for our constituency and country. We note that 42% of Labour MPs who voted at Third Reading voted against Kim Leadbeater’s Bill, a number likely to grow if a new Bill were introduced. It is time Labour MPs united to focus on core issues that are a priority to the public.

Reintroducing Kim Leadbeater’s bill and forcing it into law via the Parliament Acts would require exactly the same flawed bill - opposed by numerous bodies including the Royal College of Psychiatrists - to be passed unamended by MPs, and then bypassing the House of Lords. This would mean the many problems with the Bill, which would put victims of domestic abuse, people with anorexia and other vulnerable groups at grave risk, could not be fixed.

We urge you, please, not to use this great opportunity for our constituency on bringing back the assisted dying Bill, but on a bill we can all support.

Thank you for all you do to serve our constituency.

Full details on polling 

Below is a summary of the data for the Rochester and Stroud constituency - for a summary of the national data, see our full press release on the polling here.

The large number of people signing the petition coincides with the release of a major MRP poll, which has found that there is no mandate from the public in Rochester and Strood to resurrect Leadbeater’s bill and bypass the House of Lords to introduce it into law, nor any appetite for Lauren Edwards to prioritise assisted dying over other possible bills

• The full data tables for the polling are available here: https://www.whitestoneinsight.com/s/The-Other-Half-MRP-Poll-Tables-May-2026.xlsx

  • The results for Rochester and Strood are on the seat tab in row 494.

• The polling was carried out by leading polling company Whitestone Insight on behalf of think tank The Other Half from 7-14 May, and canvassed the views of more than 10,000 people across Great Britain. It used MRP, constituency-level modelling, to provide accurate constituency-level data.

  • The poll is the largest poll on assisted dying since Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying Bill was introduced in October 2024

Key polling findings for Rochester and Strood:

• 1 - Majority in Rochester and Strood reject bypassing the House of Lords to force a non-manifesto bill into law 

  1. a. In Rochester and Strood a majority of voters (61%) agree they would not want their MP to support a law pushed through Parliament without full scrutiny and approval by both the House of Lords and House of Commons - as would be the case if the assisted dying Bill were brought back by Lauren Edwards and then forced through Parliament using the Parliament Acts; only 8% disagreed. (Q2, Cells P494 and R494).

  • The MRP poll suggests that there is no public mandate in Rochester and Strood for resurrecting the assisted dying Bill and then using the Parliament Acts to bypass the House of Lords to force it into law.

• 2 - Assisted dying is not a public priority in Rochester and Strood

  • Legalising assisted dying came rock bottom of a list of Rochester and Strood voters’ priorities that they would want their MP to focus on if they had the opportunity to make a law change over the next year, as Lauren Edwards now does with her Private Members’ Bill.

    • Legalising assisted dying came bottom of 10 possible priorities for constituents; only 7% of her constituents included it in their top three priorities for what they would want Lauren Edwards to prioritise if she has a chance to bring forward a change in the law. (Q1, Cell M494)

• 3 - Majority in Rochester and Strood say Parliament should prioritise NHS and end-of-life care first

  • In Rochester and Strood, the majority of voters (59%) agreed that Parliament should prioritise fixing the NHS and improving palliative, social and end-of-life care before considering whether to introduce assisted dying. (Q3a, Cell S494)

• 4 - Majority in Rochester and Strood back the House of Lords’ duty to scrutinise, amend or block risky legislation

  • A majority / over two-thirds in Rochester and Strood (67%) believe members of the House of Lords have a duty to scrutinise, amend and, if necessary, block any legislation if they believe it could put vulnerable people at risk; only 10% disagreed. (Q4c, Cell AH494 and AJ494), contrary to claims from pro-assisted dying supporters that the Lords behaved irregularly.

    • This follows the rulings of the House of Lords Constitution Committee and Hansard Society, who both stated that the Lords had no constitutional obligation to pass Kim Leadbeater’s Bill, which was a Private Members’ Bill not in the Government’s election manifesto, or to return it to the Commons.

• 5 - Majority in Rochester and Strood agree their MP should not support a Bill to legalise assisted dying that allows patients with anorexia or other eating disorders to end their lives through assisted dying; fewer than one in five disagree (Q4a, Cell AB494 and AD494)

  1. a. The anorexia loophole remained in the Bill, which would have allowed patients with anorexia or other eating disorders to end their lives through assisted dying. 

     1. i. Further details on the anorexia loophole that would remain in the Bill and could not be fixed if the Parliament Acts route were used, by researcher Chelsea Roff, can be found here: https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/assisted-dying-bill-anorexia-loophole-opinion-5HjdZwD_2/

• 6 - Voters in Rochester and Strood want safeguards that were missing in the assisted dying Bill in the previous parliamentary session

  • The public in Rochester in Strood made it clear that they had  many concerns about unresolved safeguards in the assisted dying Bill that left the House of Commons last summer, which they would want addressed before any such law is re-introduced.

    • But if the Parliament Acts were to be used, the Commons would have to pass an essentially identical Bill to the one it passed in 2025, meaning that none of its many flaws could be fixed.

      1. 1. The majority of the public in Rochester and Strood (63%) said that family members and/or next of kin should have the right to be told about a family member’s request to have a doctor assist in their suicide if assisted dying were legalised(Q5a, Cell AK494)

         • Under the Bill as it left the Commons, there was no requirement in the Bill to inform or involve family, and nothing in the Bill to prevent assisted dying from effectively taking place in secret, meaning a family may have only discovered about a loved one’s death afterwards.

      2. 2. The majority of the public / almost 7 in 10 in Rochester and Strood (68%) thought that only the patient themselves should be able to raise the option of assisted dying under an assisted dying law. Only 10% said this safeguard was unnecessary. (Q5b, Cell AN494 and AO494)

         • Under the Bill as it left the Commons, a doctor could have raised the possibility of ending one’s life by assisted dying unprompted.

      3. 3. Over 8 in 10 of the public in Rochester and Strood (81%) said that extra care should be taken to protect victims of domestic abuse from being coerced into an assisted death if such a law were passed, only 3% said this was unnecessary(5c, Cell AQ494 and AR494)

         • While the Bill included domestic abuse training and coercion offences, it did not create a standalone domestic abuse victim safeguard or bar.

      4. 4. The majority of the public in Rochester and Strood (65%) said coroners, who investigate all unusual deaths, should also be involved in checking all assisted dying cases if an assisted dying law were passed. (6a, Cell AT494)

         • The assisted dying Bill, as it left the Commons, would have amended the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 to ensure there is no statutory duty to investigate deaths “caused by the self-administration by the deceased of an approved substance”. This means that the deaths of those who die by assisted dying would not have been automatically referred to a coroner, as is normally required in cases of “unnatural deaths” (see Coroners and Justice Act 2009 s1(2)(a) or those caused by the administration of drugs.

         • Experts have shared their concerns that a lack of coroner oversight in the assisted dying bill would have risked hiding unlawful deaths or abuses.

      5. 5. The majority of the public in Rochester and Strood (61%) said universal end-of-life care should be introduced before assisted dying is legalised (6b, Cell AW494)

         • Under the Bill as it left the Commons, such care was not a precondition for legalisation.

What this means for Lauren Edwards and risks for the Labour Party

• The poll suggests that if Lauren Edwards chose to revive the Leadbeater Bill, she would be taking on a highly divisive issue that voters in Rochester and Strood do not rank as a priority, and doing so in the face of strong constituency-level support for full parliamentary scrutiny, stronger safeguards, and fixing NHS and end-of-life care first.

• Risks for Labour

  • Following the bad results for Labour in the local, Scottish Parliament and Welsh Parliament elections, Labour MPs (such as Lauren Edwards) who were successful in the Private Members’ Bill ballot need now to decide if they want to revive the assisted dying Bill, triggering another highly toxic and divisive battle on the issue of assisted dying that will last for all of the next parliamentary session and far beyond.

  • Labour MPs were hugely divided on Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying Bill:

    • At Third Reading, 42% of Labour MPs who voted opposed the assisted dying Bill.

    • In Scotland, 85% (17 out of 20) of Labour MSPs voted against assisted dying when the Holyrood Bill fell in March.

  • These votes above have happened alongside 19 months of Labour-on-Labour division among Labour MPs and senior Labour leadership over the assisted dying Bill. 

  • Resurrecting the Leadbeater Bill risks an ongoing public battle between Labour MPs on this issue, which would last far beyond this current Parliamentary session.

Ends 

Whitestone interviewed 10,222 GB adults online from 7-14 May 2026. Data were weighted to be demographically representative of all GB adults by gender, age, social grade, other demographics and past voting patterns.

Data tables for the poll: https://www.whitestoneinsight.com/the-other-half-mrp-may-2026

The Other Half is a centre of research for practical, workable policy in the interests of women - https://theotherhalf.uk/

If you need additional information or want to organise a media interview with our CEO, Fiona Mackenzie MBE, email hello@theotherhalf.uk