MP calls for debate on assisted suicide

AN Oldham MP is calling for a debate on assisted suicide, warning the issue should not be brushed aside.

Oldham West and Royton MP Michael Meacher is one of more than 100 MPs worried about choices some terminally ill adults are being forced to make due to a lack of assisted dying legislation in the UK.

The move comes as the Government says it is modernising the law on assisted suicide via the Coroners’ and Justice Bill.

Mr Meacher said: “I think where the person concerned has clearly indicated a wish to die and that it is clear from medical advice from doctors that the condition or disability is incurable, and where evidence or lack of evidence show that nothing is being done to procure death, for example for financial gain, then I think there is a case.

“I do not think we should turn our backs on the issue. It would be a very small number of individual cases and it would be surrounded by conditions.”

Next week MPs will be able to raise the issue as the Coroners’ and Justice Bill returns to the Commons.

Chief executive of campaign group Dignity in Dying, Sarah Wootton, said: “This level of support for a debate is very encouraging. These 100 MPs agree that there is a problem with the current law, which forces terminally ill adults to travel abroad to die, to ask loved ones or doctors to risk their liberty and help them to die, or to attempt to take their own lives.

“This is a problem that needs addressing with urgency before any more terminally ill adults have to take these desperate decisions. Only last week the case emerged of Peter and Penelope Duff, who both had terminal cancer and travelled to Switzerland in order to end their suffering.”

The Coroners’ and Justice Bill aims to modernise the 1961 Suicide Act, but Ms Wooton says it fails to make the distinction between maliciously encouraging a suicide and compassionately assisting a terminally ill person who wants to die.

The MPs said they were concerned the 1961 act is not “fit for purpose” and want a full debate on whether the law should be updated.