Medic MPs urge colleagues to support assisted dying bill

A cross-party group of seven MPs who’ve labored within the NHS have urged their colleagues to support a bill which might legalise assisted dying.

Backbench Labour MP Kim Leadbeater has proposed laws which might give terminally ailing adults in England and Wales the best to select to finish their lives.

In a letter the group of medics, led by Labour MP and GP Dr Simon Opher, mentioned they “do not believe that the current law is in the best interests of patients”.

However, different MPs, together with Health Secretary Wes Streeting, have raised issues folks may really feel coerced into taking their very own lives and mentioned they are going to vote in opposition to the bill.

MPs will get a free vote on the problem, that means they will select based mostly on their very own conscience reasonably than having to comply with the get together line.

The challenge has break up Parliament, with MPs from the identical get together divided by ethics and sensible issues and the vote is anticipated to be shut.

In their letter, first reported by the Guardian, the group of medic MPs mentioned: “Many of us have extensive experience in palliative and terminal care and we have been aware for many years of the awful dilemma put before patients and clinicians in the last days of life.

“For too a few years, palliative employees, GPs and group groups have been caught between the legislation (which forbids any help in hastening the tip of life), and our compassionate take care of sufferers, whom we all know want us to curtail their struggling.”

The group – which includes both Labour and Conservative MPs – said they understood the concerns of others but Parliament has to be “courageous sufficient to change the legislation on this troublesome space for the advantage of sufferers”.

Labour MPs Sadik Al-Hassan, who is a pharmacist, Cat Eccles, an operating department practitioner, Kevin McKenna, a former nurse, and Dr Peter Prinsley, a consultant ENT surgeon, also signed the letter, along with Tory MPs Dr Luke Evans, a former GP, and Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst, a former surgeon.

MPs are due to debate the bill on 29 November, when they will also get an initial vote.

If it passes its first vote the bill would face further scrutiny from MPs and peers, who would both have to approve the final version for it to become law.

Full details of the bill have not yet been published but it is expected to be similar to one proposed in the House of Lords earlier this year, which said terminally ill adults with six months or less to live would be able to get medical help to end their own lives.

Leadbeater has said there must be both medical and judicial safeguarding to ensure people are not pressurised to end their lives.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who has previously supported legalising assisted dying, has said his government will remain neutral on the bill.

The issue has split Parliament, with Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy among those who have said they plan to support the bill.

Last week it emerged the health secretary had privately told colleagues he would vote against the legislation.

He later informed the BBC he was apprehensive terminally ailing folks may really feel “like a burden” and be “guilt-tripped” into ending their own lives sooner than they would have liked.

Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has also said she will not support the proposals because of her “unshakeable perception within the sanctity and the worth of human life”.

On Thursday Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said he was “minded” to vote against the bill because he was concerned elderly and disabled people might feel pressurised to end their lives.

He argued improving end-of-life care would ease people’s fears of a painful death and make many cases of assisted suicide unnecessary.

Throughout the UK, laws prevent people from asking for medical help to die.

A separate bill to legalise assisted dying has additionally been proposed in Scotland.