Health minister resigns to undergo cancer treatment
Public health and prevention minister Ashley Dalton MP has today stepped down from her post while she continues to undergo cancer treatment.
In her resignation letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the West Lancashire MP said she was stepping back from ministerial duties to manage her condition and focus on representing her constituents.
The Labour MP, who led on the development the Government’s new National Cancer Plan, said she is living with and receiving oral chemotherapy treatment for metastatic breast cancer.
In the letter she added: ‘My constituents deserve a member of parliament to represent them with diligence and conviction.
‘Whilst my oral chemotherapy treatment will not stop me from being that champion for West Lancashire, I believe now is the right time to take the reasonable adjustments I need to both manage my condition and focus on being a constituency MP by stepping back from ministerial duties’.
Ms Dalton, who introduced the cancer plan to parliament last month, said writing it had been ‘an immense honour’. She added that she had led the HIV Action Plan and Men’s Health Strategy with ‘great pride’.
‘I will be forever grateful for the confidence you have shown in me, inviting me to bring my experience into Government,’ she said.
‘People living with cancer know that the government places cancer patients at the heart of the National Cancer Plan because you put a cancer patient at the head of the plan’.
She said that she will now ‘return to the backbenches’ and ‘continue to work towards improving health outcomes for people living with cancer’.
Responding to Ms Dalton’s resignation letter on X, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said she ‘has been an outstanding minister’.
‘She has achieved more as a minister than many politicians achieve in their entire careers,’ he said.
Mr Streeting added: ‘I’m so sorry to lose her from our team, but proud of her decision and her impact.’
In a response letter, Mr Starmer thanked Ms Dalton for her work and added: ‘You are an exemplary minister and should be extremely proud of the impact that you have made on behalf of this Labour government.’
Ms Dalton was elected MP for West Lancashire on 9 February 2023 and became parliamentary under-secretary of state for public health and prevention in the Department of Health and Social Care on 10 February 2025.
In an op-ed for Pulse in January, Ms Dalton thanked GPs for making the rollout of chickenpox vaccination possible.
Labour MP for Washington and Gateshead South Sharon Hodgson has been appointed to replace Ms Dalton. Mrs Hodgson was first elected in May 2005 and served as a shadow minister for public health when her party was in opposition.
A version of this article was first published by Pulse’s sister title Healthcare Leader
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