Ashley Dalton is the Labour MP for West Lancashire, having first been elected to parliament in a by-election on 9 February 2023.

In the 2024 general election, Dalton won 22,305 votes, representing 50.5% of the vote. The Conservative candidate, Mike Prendergast, received 8,680 votes (19.6%), while the Reform UK candidate, Simon Evans, secured 7,909 votes (17.9%). Dalton was duly elected with a majority of 13,625 votes.

The West Lancashire constituency includes the towns of Skelmersdale, Ormskirk, and Burscough, along with surrounding villages. Edge Hill University is located within the constituency. The seat was held by the Conservative Party between 1983 and 1992. Dalton succeeded Labour MP Rosie Cooper who resigned the seat after she was named chair of the Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust.

The decision also came a few years after she was targeted as part of a murder plot by members of a banned neo-Nazi group.

Political Career

Dalton was appointed parliamentary under-secretary of state for public health and prevention at the Department of Health and Social Care in February 2025. The appointment followed the dismissal of Andrew Gwynne who had held the post from July 2024 to February 2025. Gwynne’s sacking came after the Mail on Sunday revealed he sent a string of offensive and abusive WhatsApp messages.

Dalton resigned this position in March 2026 on health grounds, saying she needed to make “reasonable adjustments”.

In January 2025, Dalton said she had been diagnosed with breast cancer for a second time. She was first diagnosed with the disease in 2014 and underwent surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Dalton told her constituents that “currently there is no cure for metastatic breast cancer, but it is treatable” and insisted she was working “business as usual”. She said that while the cancer had spread beyond her breast, there were currently no identifiable tumours in her body.

Dalton later said she wants to “debunk” misconceptions about metastatic cancers. “When you have cancer you do seem to spend a lot of time just explaining it and that can be exhausting,” she told BBC Radio Lancashire.

“People do seem to think it is one thing or the other so they think I am about to drop dead or I am completely cured and there is a lot in between for people like me”, she added.

She said it was “business as usual” and “work carries on”.

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In a statement upon her resignation, issued on 2 March 2026, she said: “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.”

Responding to her resignation, Wes Streeting, the health secretary, said she had been an “outstanding minister… in the face of extraordinary adversity”.

In an article for the Times, Dalton wrote: “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 will I know I’ve beaten my cancer, I tell them ‘when I’ve died of something else’.”

Prior to her ministerial appointment, Dalton served as a parliamentary private secretary (PPS) to Labour’s health team, both in government and opposition. A PPS acts as an unpaid assistant to a minister, providing a link between the senior frontbencher and backbench MPs. She also served as shadow minister for women and equalities from November 2023 to May 2024.

Upon her appointment as health minister, a historic social media post by Dalton was unearthed in which she suggested that an individual self-identifying as a llama “should be taken seriously”.

In an exchange on Twitter (now X), Dalton was asked if people should be taken seriously if they identified as a llama. She responded: “Yes. And treat [them] with respect and dignity.”

The relevant posts also saw Dalton voice her view that “trans women are women”.

She added: “I think people should be able to define their own gender and that society should be set up to support not hinder that.”

Responding to reports on Dalton’s historic social media posts, Reform UK’s Lee Anderson questioned whether someone identifying as a llama, who then becomes ill, should ask for a “doctor, a vet or a straitjacket”.

Speaking at commons health and social care questions, secretary of state Wes Streeting responded: “The minister for public health [Dalton] believes in treating every human being with the dignity and respect they deserve. Even the honourable gentleman.”

In 2024, PinkNews listed Dalton among a number of out LGBTQ+ parliamentarians.

Dalton is a patron of LGBT+ Labour – a socialist society formally affiliated with the Labour Party.

Upon winning the 2023 by-election in her West Lancashire seat, Dalton told then-prime minister Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party to “move out of the way” by calling a general election.

She said: “Tonight the people of West Lancashire constituency have spoken on behalf of the country. They’ve sent a message to this Conservative government: they do not have confidence in them to govern or the prime minister to lead.

“Prime minister, your government has no ideas or a plan to address the big issues facing our country, like record levels of child poverty and people dying waiting for ambulances. The people of Lancashire have put their trust in Keir Starmer’s Labour. We’ve provided hope, a hope that we can build a better Britain, which means a better Lancashire.

“These are testing times for our country, I have had hundreds of conversations with voters and I know how hard life has become and the unthinkable choices people are having to face. I have a plan to make West Lancashire a better place to live, work and grow old in.”

Labour said Dalton’s victory, with 14,068 votes (62.3%), was the worst for the Conservatives in West Lancashire since the constituency was created.

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Dalton was a member of the House of Commons public accounts committee from April to December 2023.

Dalton delivered her maiden speech on 16 March 2023 during a debate on the spring budget. In it, she said: “Politics is often spoken about in abstract terms, as though it is something that happens to someone else, somewhere else, separate from our communities.

“When I stand to speak, 100 years since the first women were elected to this place… I speak with the voices of [working people], and all the other people of West Lancashire, because the politics in here must meet the ambition of the communities out there.”

She added: “What we choose to do shows where our priorities lie. Our priorities are born out of what we stand for. On the Labour Benches we stand for meeting the ambition of the people of West Lancashire and beyond, not for getting by but for getting on.”

Speaking after her selection as the Labour candidate for the Rochford and Southend constituency for the first time (2017), Dalton said: “This Tory government has overseen the biggest cuts to our public services in a generation and they think we will return a Tory MP over and over regardless of the levels of funding they cut from our schools, how much cuts to police budgets put our safety at risk or if they downgrade our A&E.”

Dalton previously stood unsuccessfully as the Labour candidate in the Rochford and Southend East constituency at the 2017 and 2019 general elections. She finished second on both occasions to the incumbent Conservative MP, James Duddridge, who was unseated by Labour’s Bayo Alaba at the 2024 general election.

Dalton has served on the executive committee of LGBT Labour.

In 2018, she won election as Unison Southend’s local government branch LGBT+ officer.

Political views

Leadership elections and loyalty

Labour deputy leadership 2025: Dalton was one of 175 Labour MPs who nominated Bridget Phillipson for the party’s deputy leadership in September 2025. The election followed the resignation of Angela Rayner, who stepped down as deputy prime minister and deputy party leader after an investigation into her tax affairs. It marked the first time since 2007 that Labour had held a deputy leadership contest while in government.

Phillipson, the serving education secretary, was widely viewed as the candidate favoured by Downing Street and the party leadership. She secured 175 nominations from the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), comfortably exceeding the 80 required to reach the final ballot. he was ultimately defeated by Lucy Powell.

Welfare

Welfare vote (July 2025): Dalton voted in favour of the government’s flagship welfare bill at second reading. The vote came after ministers agreed to significant concessions to avoid defeat via a mass rebellion of Labour MPs on 1 July 2025.

Assisted dying

Dalton voted against the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, better known as the assisted dying bill, at both second reading (November 2024) and third reading (June 2025).

In a statement setting out her position, issued June 2025, Dalton said: “I know how it feels to face your own death. I have metastatic cancer and during this debate considering how I might die, if I were terminally ill, has not been an entirely hypothetical exercise.

“I have first-hand experience of receiving the news that you have an incurable fatal disease.”

She added: “I do not believe adequate safeguards have been put in place to prevent coercion. I believe that, if the bill is passed, some terminally ill people will feel obliged to choose assisted dying if family suggest it, to save care costs, or not to feel a burden on family or the NHS.”

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Before Politics

Born in Lancashire, Dalton grew up in Leyland, South Ribble. She was adopted as a baby. She attended All Hallows Catholic High School in Penwortham and Preston College.

She studied English and politics at Middlesex University and joined the Labour Party during her studies.

Dalton worked in local government for Southend-on-Sea Borough Council for 17 years.

She has also volunteered for Macmillan Cancer Support, having previously recovered from breast cancer.

Personal Life

On her official website, Dalton describes herself as “a mum, a carer, a cancer survivor and a proud Lancashire lass.”

Dalton’s ex-husband died of kidney cancer.

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Trivia

Dalton first became aware of the Labour Party when a customer ordered 40 red rose buttonholes for a by-election count from her father’s florist’s shop.