Health minister Ashley Dalton, who has advanced breast cancer, has resigned from her post while she continues to undergo chemotherapy.
In her resignation letter, she told Sir Keir Starmer: “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 told the prime minister she would be “forever grateful for the confidence you have shown in me”, adding: “Your government has committed to making sure that people with long-term health conditions are supported and enabled to return to or continue to work where they can.
“It is so important that we recognise the value of all of us to contribute and participate and that we stop writing people off due to health or disability.
“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.”
She continued: “I return to the backbenches, committed to being a powerful voice in Westminster for my constituents.
“I will continue to work towards improving health outcomes for people living with cancer and support your leadership on the government’s agenda to bring about the change the country trusted us to deliver.”
Responding to her resignation, health secretary Wes Streeting said she had been an “outstanding minister… in the face of extraordinary adversity”.
“She has achieved more as a minister than many politicians achieve in their entire careers. I’m so sorry to lose her from our team, but proud of her decision and her impact”, he said.
Ms Dalton, MP for West Lancashire, was appointed as public health minister in February 2025 following Andrew Gwynne’s resignation and suspension from the Labour Party.
The month before her appointment, she had been diagnosed with incurable breast cancer, after having undergone surgery and chemotherapy for the same condition in 2014.
Writing in The Times, Ms Dalton, 53, said that she needed to make a change to her workload so she could “continue to serve my constituents as they deserve, whilst adequately managing the side effects of chemo as well as caring for my elderly mum”.
She added: “The alternative would likely be more regular trips to Liverpool Aintree, making myself sick and unable to fulfil any of the roles I love.”
Last month, Ms Dalton helped present the government’s national cancer plan.
She said the days following justified her decision to step down, adding that she spent the weekend “at Aintree University Hospital, IV drip hanging from my arm, blood tests, ECG and a chest x-ray, praying I wouldn’t need to be admitted”.
Ms Dalton said she takes chemotherapy as “five tablets twice a day for two weeks, with a week of rest” as part of a three-week cycle of treatment.
She added: “And, at present, my disease is stable. Having said that, metastatic breast cancer is incurable. I will never beat it.
“In fact, when people ask when I will know I’ve beaten my cancer, I tell them ‘when I’ve died of something else’.
“But the biggest mistake anyone could make about me and my cancer is to write me off.
“Upon being diagnosed with metastatic, sometimes called advanced, or stage 4 cancer, I was told not to worry because support was available for me to access benefits and to give up work.
“For some people, giving up work and accessing support from the state is absolutely the right choice. But just as cancer is not homogeneous, neither are we people living with cancer.”
Ms Dalton said she was “incredibly grateful and incredibly fortunate that through my work as an MP and having been entrusted by the prime minister to serve in his government, I have been able to thrive despite my disease”.
This is a breaking news story. More to follow…
