Dawn Butler.

Five rebel votes in two months make Dawn Butler one of the more conspicuous Labour dissenters on the current Parliament's most contested legislation. She voted against the UC and Personal Independence Payment Bill at Third Reading in July 2025, having also backed an amendment to extend protections to people with fluctuating conditions such as Parkinson's and MS — conditions the Bill's criteria appeared to exclude. On assisted dying, she voted against the bill at Third Reading and backed a clause that would have barred applications driven substantially by fear of being a burden, disability unrelated to terminal illness, or financial hardship. Beyond Parliament, she has run a sustained campaign against betting shop proliferation in Brent, surveying 7,000 households and coordinating with 40 councils nationally — a story that reached The Guardian. She also secured a £20m housing investment for a constituency estate through the Pride in Place scheme.

At 70% voting participation, Butler sits below the Commons average. Her stance profile marks her out as a near-perfect progressive-taxation and workers'-rights voter, but she scores just 12% on pro-business measures and 5% on supporting Lords scrutiny. The sharpest deviations from her party are on assisted dying — 47 percentage points less supportive of access than the Labour average — and armed forces welfare, where she runs 48 points above it. Her 192 contributions across 107 debates are spread across economy, social care, health, local government, and defence.

Butler has no current committee roles. Her speech record suggests broad engagement rather than narrow specialism, though welfare, health inequality, and race equality recur as consistent themes — the last reflected in her establishment of the Bernie Grant Leadership Programme and the Parliamentary Black Caucus. Recent constituency news is positive in tone. No sentiment data covering the most recent 90 days is available.