Former Prime Minister Lord David Cameron has backed a move to legalize assisted dying for moderately ill adults.
In an article in The Times, Lord Cameron said that although he had opposed moves to legalize assisted dying in the past, he believed the current proposal “It’s not about ending life, it’s about shortening death.“
His main concern previously was that “vulnerable people could be pressured to hasten their deaths”, but he said he believed the current proposal contained “sufficient safeguards” to prevent this. are
Lord Cameron has become the first former prime minister to back the bill. After Gordon BrownBaroness Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss all said they were against it.
Brown, a long-standing critic of assisted dying, told BBC Radio 4’s Sunday programme: “An assisted dying law, however well, would change society’s attitudes towards the elderly, the terminally ill and the disabled, even if only marginally, and I fear caregiving. The professions are somewhat untenable. will lose compensation – their status as exclusive carers.”
Brown, Johnson and Truss will not get a vote on the issue because they are no longer MPs.
However Lord Cameron, who was appointed a peer by Rishi Singh to serve as foreign secretary, promised to vote for the bill if it reached the House of Lords.
The last time the House of Commons voted on legalizing assisted dying in 2015, it did not record a vote.
Sources close to Baroness May, who also sits in the Lords, said her views had not changed since she voted against legalizing assisted dying in 2015.
MPs will have their first chance to vote on the bill proposed by Labor MP Kim Leadbetter on Friday.
Currently slightly more MPs have publicly said they would support it but more than half have not said which way they intend to vote, making the outcome difficult to predict.
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill will allow terminally ill people who expect to die within six months to seek help to end their lives if two doctors and a High Court judge confirm that they are eligible. And they have made their decision voluntarily.
Ledbetter said the “status is not fit for purpose” and his proposals could prevent “very painful, very painful deaths”.
Current laws in the UK prevent people from seeking medical help to die.
The bill would require people who apply for assisted dying to:
- Be over 18, resident in England and Wales and registered with a GP for at least 12 months.
- Have the mental capacity to make choices about ending their lives.
- Express a “clear, definite and informed” desire free of coercion or pressure at every stage of the process.
Writing in The Times, Lord Cameron said: “Many of these considerations will be familiar from previous proposals.
“But this new bill provides more protection to the vulnerable, including by criminalizing coercion.”
He added: “Will this law lead to a meaningful reduction in human suffering? I find it very difficult to argue that the answer to that question is anything other than ‘yes’.”
However, some have expressed concern that terminally ill people may still feel pressured to end their lives.
NHS palliative care specialist Dr Rachel Clarke told BBC Radio 4’s Today program that the “complex” nature of end-of-life care means some people “feel burdened”. Can be done or suffer pain that can be avoided. with better treatment.
GP Dr Jess Harvey said there would also be practical problems with introducing assisted dying into an “already overburdened and overwhelmed NHS system”.
He told the program there would be costs to establishing “almost a new specialist area” and questioned whether the money would be better spent on improving palliative care.