The legalisation of assisted dying in England and Wales appeared to take a decisive step forward after it was announced a bill will come before MPs this month that could give people a choice about end of life care.
The Labour MP Kim Leadbeater said her private member’s bill would give terminally ill, eligible adults a choice at the end of life to shorten their dying and ensure stronger protection for them and their loved ones after their death.
Keir Starmer has said he supported a change in the law, although MPs would get a free vote as it is a conscience issue. Downing Street has said it would not obstruct the bill and the government would be expected to support the MP with drafting in the later stages.
Writing for the Guardian, Leadbeater said the law had not been updated for 60 years and that it was now time to bring the UK into line with some other countries. “Somebody with a terminal condition and very little time left has only bad options,” the Spen Valley MP said.
She added: “I believe we should have the right to see out our days surrounded by those we love and care for, knowing that when we are gone they can remember us as we would like to be remembered. I also believe that if we were able to spare them any unnecessary trauma and uncertainty, we would want to do that too.”
The MP, who came first in the private members’ ballot, said there would be safeguards and protections in place, to make sure people could not come under pressure to agree to assisted dying against their will. She said her bill would not undermine calls for improvements to palliative care.
Leadbeater said: “Parliament should now be able to consider a change in the law that would offer reassurance and relief – and most importantly, dignity and choice – to people in the last months of their lives.”
However, while polling shows that a majority of the public back legalising support for terminally ill people who wish to end their lives, the issue could cause serious divisions across parties, with opinion split.
While the prime minister said last year, when he was in opposition, that there were “grounds for changing the law”, the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has said she could not back a policy that she described as “a really dangerous position to be in”.
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, suggested last month he worried that the state of end-of-life care in the UK meant it was not ready for assisted dying. He has raised concerns over people being coerced into exercising their right to die because of a lack of end-of-life care.
Similar legislation is already under consideration in Scotland, the Isle of Man and Jersey. Under the current law, anybody in England, Wales and Northern Ireland who travels with a loved one to Dignitas in Switzerland, or stays with someone to comfort them at home as they end their own life, could be liable to prosecution for up to 14 years.
When UK MPs last voted on the issue in 2015, the Labour MP Rob Marris introduced a bill that meant people with fewer than six months to live could be prescribed a lethal dose of drugs, which they would have to take themselves. It was defeated by 330 votes to 118.
The Conservative former cabinet minister Kit Malthouse, the chair of the cross-party group of MPs on choice at the end of life, said: “Since the last vote on this issue in 2015, more and more MPs have come to realise that the current situation is a horror show for far too many.
“Every day people with terminal diseases are forced to endure agony and degradation, denied the choice to end their lives in peace and dignity, surrounded by those who love them.
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“The law has to change, for compassion’s sake, and Kim’s bill will be welcomed by the millions who simply don’t understand how parliament can tolerate the terrible pain and misery inaction is inflicting on so many.”
Australia, New Zealand, Oregon and a number of other US states currently have assisted dying laws for terminally ill people, as Leadbeater has proposed. None of them has ever repealed the laws, or subsequently relaxed them. Several other countries, including Canada, have less restrictive approaches based around intolerable suffering.
The broadcaster Dame Esther Rantzen, who is terminally ill with lung cancer and last year revealed she had joined Dignitas, the assisted dying clinic, welcomed the news which she said meant people like her could “look forward with hope and confidence that we could have a good death”.
She added: “I never thought I might live to see the current cruel law change. But even if it is too late for me, I know thousands of terminally ill patients and their families will be given new hope. All we ask is to be given the choice over our own lives.”
Dr Gordon Macdonald, the chief executive of Care Not Killing which is opposed to a change in the law, said he was disappointed to hear that a bill would be introduced.
He said: “I would strongly urge the government to focus on fixing our broken palliative care system that sees up to one in four Brits who would benefit from this type of care being unable to access it, rather than discussing again this dangerous and ideological policy.”
Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the Labour former justice secretary, has introduced a separate assisted dying bill in the House of Lords, which is expected to be debated in mid-November.