Helen Hayes.

Hayes made headlines for her near-total opposition to the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, voting against it at Third Reading and breaking with the Labour majority on four of the five divisions at Report Stage on 20 June 2025. Her deviations track a clear pattern: she sits 47 percentage points below her party on assisted dying access, and 21 points above it on anti-assisted dying stances. She also drew local pressure over Palestine — a Brixton Buzz investigation in July 2025 documented constituent frustration at what it described as unresponsiveness and a voting record on arms and ceasefire motions that critics argued contradicted her public statements.

A 97.3% party-line voter overall, Hayes participates in 79% of divisions — close to the Commons average. Her stance data flags two notable features: she scores 0% on pro-lords-scrutiny and 19% on pro-parliamentary-scrutiny, suggesting consistent support for the executive's preferred pace of legislation. Against that, she votes strongly for progressive taxation (100%), workers' rights (85%), and fiscal responsibility (83%). Her 239 speech contributions are spread across education, social care, local government, and the economy — a broad constituency-facing portfolio rather than a narrow specialist brief.

As Chair of the Education Select Committee, Hayes has been the most visible on the forced adoptions inquiry: her committee published a report in March 2026 calling for an urgent government apology, and she described hearing survivors' testimony as among the most moving days of her parliamentary career. She also sits on the Liaison Committee, which scrutinises prime ministerial evidence sessions. News sentiment over the past 90 days averages near zero across 33 articles, with education coverage marginally positive and crime and local-government coverage broadly neutral.