More 16-year-olds in Northern Ireland say they have no religion than identify as either Catholic or Protestant, according to ARK’s 2026 Young Life and Times survey. Northern Ireland Humanists say the figures show that public policy and civic life are out of step with an increasingly non-religious society. 

The survey found that 39% of respondents belonged to no religion, compared with 35% who identified as Catholic and 24% as Protestant or other Christian. A further 2% belonged to other religions. Those with no religion were therefore the largest single group, although Christians collectively remained a majority.

Conducted by ARK, a joint initiative between Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University, the survey gathered responses from 1,965 16-year-olds across Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland Humanists said the findings underline the need for schools and public institutions to recognise young people’s own beliefs, rather than assume that everyone belongs to one of Northern Ireland’s two main religious traditions.

The findings also sit alongside evidence that young people raised without religion tend to remain non-religious. Humanists UK’s analysis of the 2024 British Social Attitudes survey found that 94% of 16–34-year-olds raised with no religion still identified that way. Just 4% identified with a form of Christianity. While this research covers Great Britain rather than Northern Ireland, it challenges the assumption that non-religious young people will generally adopt a religion as they grow older.

Northern Ireland Humanists Coordinator Boyd Sleator commented:

‘These figures should prompt a rethink of how we understand young people in Northern Ireland – their beliefs and values deserve to be recognised in their own right.

‘Young people can find meaning, build strong communities, and live ethical lives without religion. Schools should help every pupil explore religious and humanist worldviews fairly, and public services should welcome everyone equally. We should listen to what young people tell us about themselves. Their right to equal treatment matters now, whatever beliefs they may hold in the future.’

The Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses has announced a significant change to its long-standing position on the ban of blood transfusions. It is now allowing individual members to decide for themselves whether to accept donated red blood cells, white blood cells, plasma and platelets. While not meaning that Jehovah’s Witnesses can accept full blood transfusions, it does mean that in practice they can now accept almost all modern transfusions – potentially saving thousands of lives.

The change was announced on Friday 18 September in a video statement posted to their own website. While the Governing Body’s announcement reiterated that transfusion of ‘whole blood’ is still prohibited, it said that individual members can now decide for themselves on accepting any or all of four blood components from any donor. 

Responding to the announcement John Viney, an ex-Jehovah’s Witness and former member of the Jehovah’s Witness Hospital Liaison Committee, said:

‘This u-turn in the strict Jehovah’s Witness ‘no blood’ policy is not just a ‘clarification’ but a life saving move for any future member who needs a transfusion of any of the main components of blood. 

‘What a shame God did not ‘clarify’ it years ago when I was at the bedside of a lady who died for refusing red cell transfusion. Or any of the children who appeared on the front of their Watchtower magazine who died because they were told God required obedience in this matter. This may be explained by Jehovah’s Witness leaders as an update’ but it can’t bring back those thousands that missed the update.’

The statement said:

‘The long-standing refusal of whole-blood transfusions on religious grounds, a core teaching based on the command to ‘abstain from blood’ [Acts 15:20], is unchanged.’

The organisation, which has long interpreted biblical instructions to ‘abstain from blood’ as prohibiting medically administered blood transfusions, now says that decisions about the four primary components are for individual Witnesses themselves: 

‘the congregation will not get involved in that decision, and individual Christians should not judge others.’

This represents a significant change in the Jehovah’s Witness doctrine, and amounts to individual Jehovah’s Witnesses being able to choose to accept a blood transfusion in most medical situations. Ostensibly they can now do this without the fear that they will be disfellowshipped or disassociated from the congregation, or risk being shunned by family and friends as a result. It also means they can now donate blood to be given in these components to others.

Almost all modern transfusions use blood components

While the Jehovah’s Witnesses have made several changes to the blood doctrine over the years since the complete ban on blood transfusions was put in place by them in 1945, this recent change is the most significant yet. This is because most blood transfusions in modern hospital medicine today, and particularly in the UK, are not whole-blood transfusions, they are what is called ‘blood component therapy’ – the use of these four blood components which are separated after being donated. 

Donated blood, for most medical scenarios, is usually separated into four main components, and a patient is given the component they specifically need. This ‘blood component therapy’ means blood banks can make the most of every blood donation as the components of one donation can be used to help several people. According to the UK Blood Bank, donated blood is separated into the following main components:

• Red blood cells: These carry oxygen and are by far the most commonly transfused component of blood. 
• Plasma:The liquid part of blood, containing proteins and clotting factors. It’s used when someone has certain clotting problems or has lost a lot of blood.
• Platelets: Tiny cell fragments that help blood clot. 
• White blood cells: These may be given to patients suffering from life-threatening infections whose normal defence mechanisms don’t seem to be responding to antibiotics.

These four components are the same components the Jehovah’s Witnesses themselves describe as the ‘four primary components of whole blood’. And while whole-blood transfusion does still exist, particularly in some major haemorrhage and trauma settings, in the UK, component therapy is the standard approach for most transfusions.

The result is that this recent announcement by the Governing Body covers most medical cases where a blood donation is recommended by a doctor in order to treat them or indeed save the patient’s life. These can now be accepted by an individual Witness as a ‘matter of conscience’.

From prohibition to ‘personal conscience’

It is the framing of this recent announcement that the organisation now states:

‘We recognize that medical decisions involving blood components are a matter of conscience between each Witness and their God, Jehovah.’

Some Jehovah’s Witnesses will undoubtedly continue to refuse these components. They are entitled to do so. An informed adult has the right to refuse medical treatment on religious or other grounds. But Witnesses who decide to accept them will no longer be acting contrary to the Governing Body’s teaching, and without the risk of excommunication. However it remains to be seen whether those who were already excommunicated and shunned for taking blood component therapy transfusions will have those judgements rescinded.

More broadly, it raises a difficult question about institutional responsibility. For decades, the organisation told members that biblical commands concerning blood prohibited the transfusion of these four components. Now the organisation itself gives the theological reason for the change: that the Bible does not comment on these particular products and therefore the Governing Body is not authorised to ‘go beyond the things that are written’. In effect, a rule with potentially life-and-death consequences has moved from organisational prohibition to individual choice.

It raises the question: what happens when a religious organisation changes a life-and-death rule from an instruction to an individual choice?

What about those affected by the previous rule?

There is no reliable global figure for the number of Jehovah’s Witnesses who have died after refusing blood transfusions, still less the number whose deaths would definitely have been prevented had transfusion been accepted.

A 2016 medical review estimated that around 1,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses die each year after refusing blood transfusions.. Although such estimates cannot establish how many of those deaths would have been prevented by a blood transfusion, what can be said is that refusal of blood can materially affect treatment options in circumstances including severe haemorrhage and profound anaemia.

The new policy does not answer how the Governing Body will approach former members who faced disciplinary or social consequences after accepting one of the components that the Governing Body now says should always have been a matter for their own conscience.

That may ultimately be the most consequential question raised by the change.

If a religious organisation can decide today that Scripture leaves a life-and-death medical treatment to the individual conscience, what does that mean for those who were previously told that the same choice was forbidden?

Does a book change your life? It’s a subtle process, reading. It may take years to understand the effect a book has had. These are five books for your Humanist Bookshelf that have stayed with me, though. And five books I often return to, for different reasons.

Mary Plain series, by Gwynedd Rae

Let’s start with the Mary Plain series by Gwynedd Rae. They’re still in print but I had my mother’s wartime editions, printed on stiff paper. Mary Plain is a bear from the Bear Pits at Bern. She lives with the Owl Man (he wears glasses) and behaves like a small child. She communicates in rebuses (early emojis, kind of). Her adventures are small in scale and there’s no sentiment and plenty of humour in the stories. She is not a teddy bear.

The Swish of the Curtain by Pamela Brown

If this book didn’t change me, it certainly reinforced and confirmed my life choices. I’d wanted to be an actress from the age of five – despite not really knowing what it meant and with no family background in any of the arts. I read this when I was ten. Here were the children of three families, the Halfords, the Darwins, and the Faynes, who all shared my ambition and successfully put on plays and acted in them. It was possible! I could do it! I did! The author, Pamela Brown, was fourteen when she started writing the book and that was another marker along the way for me. I was published some 40-plus years older than she was when she managed it.

English Passengers by Matthew Kneale

Ambitious storytelling – there are 20 narrators – combined with lightly introduced historical events and attitudes, it’s a wonderfully funny and deeply affecting book. When I came to write The Butcher’s Hook, set in 1763, I appreciated all the more the way Kneale weaves in his research without clobbering the reader with facts. It’s a brilliant example of something obvious yet sometimes concealed – people in different times shared our appetites, faults, feelings and fears. I chose it for A Good Read on BBC Radio 4.

The Cut-Out Girl by Bart van Es

Speaking of A Good Read, here’s my second choice for that show, when I was a guest several years later. Ostensibly the story of van Es’ grandparents (among many others) sheltering a young Jewish girl in Holland during the Second World War. Hers is a moving and extraordinary life. It’s also about families, fracture, human kindness, cruelty, and revelation and, in particular, van Es’s own journey from diligent and careful investigator to someone whose heart is permanently opened. 

It sparked a fascination in me with the occupation of Amsterdam by the Nazis which in turn eventually led me to Steve McQueen’s extraordinary film, Occupied City. Revealing the layers of that time under the present-day city it shows again (there’s a theme here) that history is not only under our feet but that we could be those people. Read the book then set aside four hours to watch the film.

The Boy with the Knapsack by Lord Alf Dubs

If I was asked to nominate an exemplary humanist, it would be this man. Alf Dubs – he doesn’t like being called Lord – has an extraordinary compassion, combined with a razor-sharp intellect and a robust ability to see what needs doing and take action. That combination would be remarkable in anyone; it’s more remarkable still given that his childhood, during the Second World War, was anything but conventional or secure.  But he came to England aged six on the Kindertransport of Jewish children (masterminded by Nicholas Winton). 

Reunited with his parents, he then endured the early death of his father and life in a country riven with deprivation and difficulty for any refugee. The book charts his rise through local politics to becoming an MP and his eventual elevation to the House of Lords as a Labour peer. He is involved with the Refugee Council, was deeply embedded in the Northern Ireland peace process and much else besides and continues to fight for the care, and nurturing the futures, of child refugees. If I say he writes with a humble and grateful tone, he simply doesn’t know any other way to be. Despite his numerous achievements, he’s never one to boast. He is a warm and amiable companion, gossipy and funny along the way.

This week MPs and peers in the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group met to discuss what is next for religion in schools following recent developments including the passing of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, the Curriculum and Assessment Review, and the landmark Supreme Court JR87 ruling.

Faith schools, Religious Education, and unfinished reform 

The APPHG heard from Professor Ted Cantle, an expert on community cohesion and adviser to Belong, the cohesion and integration network. Professor Cantle raised stark concerns about the impact of selective faith school admissions has on dividing pupils across religious, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds, and emphasised that the lack of mixing between different groups reduces mutual understanding and harms cohesion. He called on the Government to act to reduce the impact of faith school selection and stated that while schools have a duty to encourage cohesion, it is no longer inspected. He ended by calling for Ofsted to reinstate its inspection of community cohesion in schools. 

Deborah Weston OBE, a lead drafter of the Religious Education Task and Finish Group, and former Company Secretary of the Religious Education Council of England and Wales, spoke next. She outlined that the recent Curriculum and Assessment Review recommended bringing Religious Education into the National Curriculum and making it inclusive of humanism, and said a consultation on content is due shortly. She argued that every young person needs rigorous, broad, and deep RE, inclusive of non-religious worldviews such as humanism, to understand the society and the world they live in.

Finally, Humanists UK’s Dr Lewis Young spoke of the positive progress of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act around tackling illegal faith schools, which saw, after years of Humanists UK campaigning on the matter, Ofsted’s powers strengthened to investigate suspected settings, and tightened regulations of settings. However, Dr Young warned parliamentarians that the work is not yet finished and that a consultation is forthcoming on standards for different types of settings. Lewis also raised that the Schools Act created a loophole that allows new 100% religiously selective schools to open. He said that Humanists UK will respond to the yet-to-be opened consultation on the School Admissions Code to press for this loophole to close. Finally, Lewis also covered the impact of the Supreme Court ruling JR87 on collective worship in schools. He said that in response to the ruling the Government has announced a change of guidance, and called for the Government to go further to replace collective worship with inclusive assemblies.

APPHG officers elected for the next year

Prior to the meeting, the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group held its AGM and re-elected Lizzi Collinge MP as Chair; Siân Berry MP and Christine Jardine MP were re-elected as Vice Chairs, and Dr Kieran Mullan MP was elected Secretary of the Group. 

The All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group is a cross-party group of Members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords of all the main parties. The Group is not part of Humanists UK, but Humanists UK provides the secretariat.

Wales Humanists have urged the Senedd’s Children, Young People and Education Committee to reform collective worship during the Seventh Senedd. In evidence to the committee, Wales Humanists called on the Senedd to investigate compulsory school worship and pave the way for inclusive assemblies for all pupils.

Schools in Wales are still legally required to provide a daily act of collective worship. In schools without a religious character, this must be wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character. This is increasingly out of step with both modern Wales and the inclusive principles of the Curriculum for Wales. Pupils are taught about religious and non-religious beliefs through Religion, Values and Ethics (RVE), yet are still required to participate in religious worship.

Wales Humanists is calling for compulsory worship in schools without a religious character to be replaced with inclusive assemblies, allowing schools to bring pupils together to reflect on shared values, ethical questions, important events, and issues affecting their communities.

Whilst the Welsh Government has committed to reviewing collective worship guidance, the guidance alone cannot solve the problem. The requirement for worship in all state schools is a legal duty which has existed since 1944, and needs to be changed to bring it in line with Wales today.

It is therefore calling on the Committee to examine the current arrangements, including children’s experiences, withdrawal rights, and the compatibility of compulsory worship with children’s freedom of religion or belief, and to consider the case for legislative reform.

Kathy Riddick, Wales Humanists Policy and Campaigns Manager, said:

‘Children should not have to choose between taking part in religious worship they do not share, and being separated from their classmates. Our schools should be places where every child can participate equally.

‘Wales has already recognised the importance of representing both religious and non-religious beliefs in the curriculum. It is now time to bring our approach to school assemblies into line with those values.’

Humanists UK has commended Education Secretary Lucy Powell for stating that it is unacceptable for schools to require young girls to wear the hijab as part of their uniform – a principled stand, it said, for children’s own freedom of religion or belief.

Asked in the House of Commons on Monday by Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott whether it was acceptable for young girls to be required to wear a hijab to school as part of their school uniform, Powell answered simply: ‘No.’

Humanists UK said the answer was the right one, and that the Department for Education should now make it clear to every state-funded school that religious dress codes cannot be imposed on children. 

Children’s rights 

Freedom of religion or belief belongs to every person, including every child. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child recognises the child’s own right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, with parents’ role being to guide – not dictate – in line with the child’s growing maturity. That right is the child’s own right, and it cannot be waived by the child’s school on their behalf.

A uniform rule that compels a seven-year-old girl to wear religious dress takes that decision out of her hands entirely. It is also clearly sexist: it places a ‘modesty’ burden on girls that is not placed on boys, teaching an unequal lesson from the earliest years.

Humanists UK applies the same principle to compulsory collective worship in schools: religious practice should be something children come to freely as they grow up, never a requirement of the law, the school, or their parents. The same principle means that Humanists UK stands by the right of freedom of religion or belief for people to not face discrimination on the basis of their beliefs, and to manifest their beliefs in their daily life, without discrimination. This same principle underpins the right for adults and older children to freely wear religious dress, including headscarves and crucifixes, and to not be unlawfully discriminated against on that basis.

How the issue arose

The row centres on Barnet Hill Academy in north London, an Islamic school which joined the state sector this month as a voluntary aided faith school. Its published uniform policy requires girls from the age of seven to wear the hijab. Following criticism, the school added that the requirement does not apply to non-Muslim pupils, and Powell told MPs the school had assured her the hijab was not compulsory, though the policy on its website still said otherwise for pupils it regards as Muslim. 

Humanists UK has also noted that, as a voluntary aided school, Barnet Hill Academy is also able to select up to 100% of its pupils on religious grounds when oversubscribed. Humanists UK has long campaigned against opening new religious state schools and against religious selection in admissions.

Freedom of choice 

Donna Craine is Support and Advocacy Services Manager for Faith to Faithless, the Humanists UK service supporting people who have faced abuse, coercive control, or shunning for leaving a high-control religion. She said that many callers to the Faith to Faithless helpline have been made to wear a headscarf against their will by family or community leaders, and that this has caused them a great deal of distress.

Humanists UK Support and Advocacy Services Manager Donna Craine said:

‘Our helpline hears from people every week – disproportionately from women – who have been told all their lives what to wear, what to believe, and who they were free to associate with. Many today are still working through the damage years later.’

Humanists UK Chief Executive Andrew Copson said:

‘Every child, whatever their background and wherever they’re sent to school, should have the freedom to decide for themselves what they believe is true about the world, including about religion. No child should be made to adhere to religious dress codes by their school. 

‘No child should be forced to participate in religious activities against their will, whether that’s being forced to wear a religious headscarf or participate in prayer or acts of worship in school assemblies.’

On Saturday 5 September, hundreds of men in black, their faces covered by balaclavas, blocked the roads into Dover and surrounded the port for hours. Then on Sunday, they did the same in Portsmouth. Traffic stopped for miles. Coastguard vehicles were damaged. And as they did it, they chanted ‘Christ is King’.

They haven’t stopped. In the days since, angry men have picketed a newspaper’s offices, threatened to return in greater numbers, and talked of round-the-clock blockades – a campaign whose tactics their leader says were inspired by Northern Irish paramilitary-style groups and which is being bankrolled via an American Christian crowdfunding site. All in the name of a ‘Christian patriotic army’.

By his own account, the leader of the ‘Christ is King’ protest group, Patriot Platform, has said an American ‘think tank’ once put £30,000 into his bank account to fund a protest in Downing Street. In 2024, Humanists UK warned that American evangelical groups had pumped over $280 million to international projects, including UK advocacy work.

Warning sirens

Humanists UK has been saying for some time that Christianity was being turned into a banner for nationalist intimidation in this country, and that the tactics, the money, and the language were being imported from the United States. At times we have been a lone voice.

We said it when preachers took to the stage at Tommy Robinson’s ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally to denounce ‘secular humanism’. We said it when a self-styled ‘King’s Army’ set out to intimidate LGBT people in Soho. We said it when councillors were reintroducing Christian prayers to council meetings and banning Pride flags on the grounds that Britain is a ‘Christian country’. 

And we said it this summer, when Andrew Copson sat down with the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in a high-profile New Humanist interview to ask whether Christian Nationalism is a threat to the UK.

What is Christian Nationalism? 

‘Christian Nationalism’ is an organised political project that uses belief in Christianity to decide who belongs in this country and whose political voice matters. It is not the same thing as Christianity, and it is not the same thing as patriotic Christianity or patriotic churches. 

Most Christians in Britain will have watched the weekend’s footage with the same unease as everyone else, and the clergy who lend themselves to these events do not come from the mainstream.

One form of extremism does not justify another

Worryingly, some have tried to argue that Christian Nationalism is a necessary evil or a ‘bulwark’ because of the existence of Islamic fundamentalism. Since the protests in Dover we have seen social media comments and emails from people who tell us that they would still ‘rather’ have a ‘Christian army’ on the streets than Islamic fundamentalists. 

We understand the fear behind that, but we are dismayed that people are being drawn into what is clearly a false binary choice. As we wrote a year ago, Christian Nationalism and Islamist extremism do not cancel each other out; in fact, they mirror one another and feed off of each other. Each defines itself against the other, points to the other as proof of its own necessity, and recruits from a corresponding pool of angry and aggrieved men. Choosing one to protect yourself from the other only makes both stronger. The only people who benefit from the choice are the two factions offering it!

But in case anyone accuses Humanists UK of naively or foolishly ‘equating’ or ‘lumping them together’, let’s be perfectly clear about one thing. The threats are not the same. 

On numbers alone, an Islamist extremist is more likely to kill you or someone you care about. A buoyant Christian Nationalist movement in Britain has a far more realistic chance of taking away your rights and freedoms because its danger lies in its proximity to power. That is what has happened in the United States, where much of Project 2025, a 900-page plan drawn up to remake the federal government along Christian Nationalist lines, is now being implemented by its own authors as federal policy across abortion rights, education, broadcasting, and more.

We need secular democracy

It’s easy to see how this movement could become close to power in this country.
Reform UK has already vowed to abolish the legal protections for human rights that every person in this country relies on. Just this week its education spokesperson, Suella Braverman, said schools that fail to make children sing hymns and the national anthem will face ‘consequences’, enforced through Ofsted and through parents reporting their children’s teachers. 

These are unsettling days. But they are not the first this country has seen, and the answer has always been the same: people who believe in reason, kindness, and equal belonging, standing up together and refusing to be quiet.

Andrew Copson, Chief Executive of Humanists UK, said:

’30 years ago Christian Nationalism in the United States was a fringe. Today it sits in the White House. We are watching the first chapters of that story being written here, and we must resist it.

‘We call on people of goodwill from across the religion or belief spectrum to stand with us against this use of religious rhetoric and religious organising power to foment a movement based on hatred and division.’

‘For politicians, there may be another vote. For people like me, there may not be another time.’

Hannah Slater, a 38-year-old mother living with a terminal illness, put the stakes of today’s decision better than any speech in the chamber managed to. MPs have rejected the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. Hannah and everyone else who asked them for a choice now has to live with that refusal.

What makes this harder to accept is that our analysis suggests there was no great ideological shift against assisted dying. Just five MPs moved from support to opposition, well short of the 12 needed to defeat the Bill. Yet 43 previous supporters abstained, more than enough to determine the outcome.

Ahead of the vote, we knew that a visit to Ukraine, a wedding, and constituency commitments would keep supporters away. These were foreseeable absences. What confidence can people have in a Parliament where a decision of such consequence can turn on whether MPs can be physically present? Dying people have been denied a choice because our parliamentary arrangements couldn’t accommodate MPs voting while attending to other responsibilities.

Those celebrating should be asked what, exactly, they’ve won for her. No extra funding for palliative care came with this vote. No new disability support. And nothing to protect people who, desperate enough, try to end their lives anyway under a law that offers them no help in doing so safely. Whatever needs brought this Bill to parliament in the first place are still there tomorrow morning. Parliament just chose not to meet them.

Victoria Denning, a former headteacher, mother of two and humanist celebrant in Monmouth, was unexpectedly diagnosed with mesothelioma this year. Told she probably had a year left, she wanted some control over how it ended: time to say goodbye, get her affairs in order, decide for herself when the suffering had become too much. ‘Today, I’ve been denied that choice,’ she says.

A decision about her own dying, one she wanted to make according to her own values, is still against the law. The people who voted to keep it that way won’t be the ones living with what that costs her.

The inequality this leaves in place hasn’t gone anywhere. Getting to Switzerland takes money, and it takes being well enough to travel, and both of those are unevenly spread across the population. People without them can’t buy their way out of a law that won’t help them at home. Some will go on suffering in ways they find unbearable. Some, in the end, will try to end their own lives alone, often earlier than they otherwise would. None of that changes because parliament voted no.

Nor does it fix what opponents of the bill were right about, when it came to care. People need proper access to palliative care. Disabled people need real support to live full, independent lives and with full freedom of choice, not just warm words about their value. And nobody should ever reach a point where dying feels like the only way out of poverty, isolation, or a system that’s failed them. Those are things that take money and political will to fix. Voting down this bill did nothing to fix any of them. It just meant parliament didn’t have to try.

For humanists, respecting life means respecting the person living it. We get one, and it’s made worth living by the people in it and the things we get to do and hope for. Taking that seriously means actually listening when someone near the end of that life says they want some say over how much suffering they have to go through first. That deserves more than sympathy and then a locked door.

There’s a democratic failure here too. The Commons passed the last version of this bill. It died in the Lords after months of proceedings where opponents talked openly about how to run the clock out. That’s what forced MPs to start all over again. Today’s result doesn’t erase the fact that obstruction is what made a second attempt necessary in the first place.

An unelected chamber shouldn’t be able to grind down a bill that already won the argument in the House that’s actually accountable to voters. People who helped make that happen might feel they’ve won something tonight. Terminally ill people are owed an honest answer about whose interests that process was really serving.

There’s a particular responsibility now on the MPs, and the professional bodies, who said they backed assisted dying in principle but couldn’t back this bill. Saying that isn’t free. It comes with an obligation to say, specifically, what eligibility rules and safeguards and oversight would have earned their support instead. Look at what other countries have done, work out what actually holds up, and say how it would work here. Vague sympathy isn’t a policy.

Government should make that work possible, and give whatever comes next an actual route through parliament. Support ‘in principle’ has to turn into something MPs can vote on, or it isn’t worth much more than a more polite way of telling dying people to keep waiting.

Lauren Edwards deserves real credit for bringing this bill back, and so do the campaigners who handed parliament some of the hardest moments of their lives to make their case. 

Hannah told MPs she might not get another chance. Silence isn’t good enough as an answer to that. The people who voted this down owe her, and everyone else living with the result, a clear account of what they intend to do instead.

Andrew Copson is Chief Executive of Humanists UK.

On Friday the Assisted Dying Bill was defeated in the House of Commons by just 16 votes. Analysis by Humanists UK shows that the change from the previous vote that led to defeat was largely due to abstentions – which went from 44 in the third reading of the previous Assisted Dying Bill to 91 now, and came more from bill supporters than opponents. Humanists UK calls this highly disappointing, leaving an unsatisfactory answer for the general public who overwhelmingly back choice.

Abstentions leading to failure

The graph shows a sharp rise in abstentions, largely from absent Labour supporters. Humanists UK spoke to MPs whose foreign visits, including to Ukraine and Norway, prevented voting, affecting more supporters than opponents. Weddings and personal matters also kept MPs away.

MPs have no formal abstention procedure. Proxy voting is limited to new parents, MPs affected by childbirth complications or bereavement, and those needing extended absence for fertility treatment or serious long-term illness or injury.

Unofficial pairing matched some supporters with opponents to cancel out their votes, but relies on trust and goodwill, with no formal procedure.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

The Bill applied only to England and Wales. Scotland recently rejected a similar Bill; the Northern Ireland Assembly has yet to debate the issue.

Scottish and Northern Irish MPs’ opposition proved decisive despite the Bill not affecting their constituents. Northern Ireland voted 0–9 and Scotland 14–28: a combined net opposition of 23 votes, exceeding the Bill’s 16-vote defeat.

MPs across the UK are more religious than their constituents, and this is especially true in Scotland. Non-religious MPs in NI and Scotland were much more likely to abstain. This was usually because they were Sinn Féin (don’t take their seats) or SNP (don’t vote on devolved matters).

Religion, belief, and the vote

After the second reading of the previous bill, we analysed how MPs voted, given their worldview. (Always accepting that this data – based on what is in the public domain, on oath data, and our own intelligence –  is not 100% correct). Repeating this for the new second reading vote:

Further tables can be found below. What can be seen is that non-religious MPs voted strongly in favour. This has held true throughout all the votes. 

MPs are more religious than the population as a whole. 52% are Christian, and 39% belong to no religion – while the latest British Social Attitudes data has half the population as non-religious and a bit less than that as Christian. If MPs reflected the population in their worldviews, the vote would have likely passed.

In Northern Ireland, 78% of MPs are Christian, versus 22% being non-religious – a bit more religious than the whole population, where around 28% are non-religious. Whereas in Scotland, 65% are Christian, versus a third non-religious. That is very out of step with the population as a whole – the 2022 Census recorded 51% of the population as non-religious, versus 39% Christian.

Nathan Stilwell, spokesperson for Humanists UK, said:

‘We know how devastating this defeat is for terminally ill people who have spent their remaining time asking Parliament to listen to their voices. Our analysis suggests that increased absences among supporters were crucial to the 16-vote defeat. A decision of such profound consequence should not hinge on overseas visits, weddings and outdated voting arrangements.

‘This will deepen public disillusionment with our political system. The Commons had already approved this reform, yet filibustering by unelected peers blocked it. People will rightly ask how a system that produces this outcome can claim to represent them. The Government should provide a credible route to change. Terminally ill people cannot wait indefinitely for Parliament to deliver the compassion and choice they deserve.’

Humanists UK have raised concerns after Hackney Council revealed plans to help independent Charedi Jewish schools move into the state education sector as voluntary aided (VA) faith schools.

Hackney’s new three-year plan for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) notes that school rolls are generally falling. But the Charedi population in the north of the borough is rising, and most Charedi children currently attend independent faith schools rather than state ones. As reported by Schools Week, Orthodox Jewish independent schools have launched legal challenges against Hackney council in a bid to secure funding for their SEND provision. While the council is resistant to this, it says it is working with the community on ‘new provision models’, including a pathway to voluntary aided (VA) status. It expects two Charedi independent schools to become VA schools within the next three years.

Warnings about 100% religiously selective schools

The proposal to convert to VA status can be made under new provisions in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, which now allow new maintained schools to open more freely for the first time since the ‘free school presumption’ was introduced in 2012. During the passage of the Act, Humanists UK warned that changes to how new schools are set up would reopen the door to new voluntary aided faith schools that could select 100% of their pupils by religion.

Despite this, the UK Government voted down an amendment, backed by Humanists UK, that would have capped faith-based admissions at 50%, the same limit that already applies to faith academies when they have more applicants than places.

Voluntary aided faith schools have greater freedom than other state schools to discriminate on religious grounds. When oversubscribed, they can prioritise up to 100% of places by religion, allowing publicly funded schools to exclude local children because of their or their parents’ beliefs. The cap would have limited this to 50%. Humanists UK has long argued that expanding the VA sector risks increasing religious segregation and undermines the principle that state-funded schools should be open and inclusive to the whole local community. Voluntary aided schools also have more freedom over how they teach Religious Education and Relationships and Sex Education. Both subjects can be taught in line with the school’s faith.

Humanists UK said that efforts to improve educational provision for Charedi children, including those with SEND, must involve genuine educational reform and not simply transfer existing provision into the state sector.

Commenting on the proposals, Humanists UK’s Policy and Campaigns Manager, Lewis Young, said:

‘Every child deserves a broad, balanced, and high-quality education. Any school entering the state sector must meet the standards expected of state-funded schools on curriculum, safeguarding, equality, inspection, and preparing pupils for life in modern Britain. It would be deeply troubling if voluntary aided status allowed highly restrictive or inadequate provision simply to transfer into the state sector without fundamental reform.

‘We warned during the passage of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act that scrapping the academy-first rule without introducing any cap on faith-based admissions would reopen the door to new voluntary aided faith schools. Hackney’s plans show why those warnings mattered.’