Wes Streeting “crossed the line” by warning that the NHS could not afford assisted dying without making cuts elsewhere, a Labour grandee has said. Harriet Harman, a former interim Labour leader, criticised the Health Secretary for wading into the debate when Cabinet ministers were told to remain neutral.

Wes Streeting is a very clever man. As one of the government’s best communicators, the health secretary knows that when he speaks, people tend to listen. So when he decided to make an intervention on fellow Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Assisted Dying Bill this week,

The Health Secretary has said he is against a change in the law to allow terminally ill people to be given assistance to end their lives.

The Labour MP leading the campaign to legalise assisted dying has criticised Wes Streeting for “very vocally” opposing the move. Kim Leadbeater said the Health Secretary’s repeated public comments against the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill were “quite disappointing and quite upsetting”.

Infighting has broken out in Labour after Wes Streeting made yet another high-profile intervention opposing the forthcoming assisted dying vote. The Health Secretary has become the most vocal and most senior voice in the Labour Party arguing against MPs backing Kim Leadbeater’s Private Members' Bill.

I’m disappointed that the health secretary came out to speak about the bill before he had even seen the bill,’ says Kim Leadbeater