'Why I believe in assisted dying': Wolverhampton MP on why he has introduced a private member's bill to legalise it

"My main reason for introducing the Assisted Dying Bill in the House of Commons is simple.

"It's a straightforward question of choice and dignity: with appropriate, strong safeguards, terminally ill adults of sound mind should be legally allowed to have assistance to end their own lives.

"Safeguards in place whilst someone is alive will provide far greater protection than the currently sporadic, retrospective investigations by a coroner after someone is dead.

"If the Assisted Dying Bill were enacted, decisions around assisted dying would be subject to intense scrutiny before a patient could die.

"Under my Bill, two doctors and a High Court judge would have to be satisfied of the requesting patient's eligibility, and that he or she had made a fully informed decision, before assisted dying would be allowed.

"Only terminally ill adults with a prognosis of six months or less, who were mentally competent, and who had considered all of their alternatives, would be eligible.

"That's transparency. That's choice. That's dignity.

"Let's be clear about what the Bill does and does not allow.

"It does allow a patient to self-administer medication to end their own life. It does not allow euthanasia.

"It does allow a terminally ill patient who is of sound mind to seek assistance. It does not allow a person with a painful disability which is not terminal to seek assistance.

"It does allow a mentally competent patient to seek assistance. It does not allow a patient with dementia to be 'put to death', as some have suggested, because dementia is not a terminal illness, and a patient with later stage dementia would not pass the 'of sound mind' test.

"I value life.

"There is no evidence that, if this law be passed, vulnerable people will be made to feel they are a burden and will therefore be pressured to take this option.

"In Oregon, USA, where there has been a similar law for 17 years, every such death has been and is investigated, and there is absolutely no evidence of such pressures being brought to bear.

"Some people, including the Prime Minister, have been misinterpreting what's in the Bill.

"It's not about euthanasia.

"This Bill does not allow anyone else to administer life-ending medication – only the patient can themselves do that.

"There will be no undue pressure on doctors. Again, there is no evidence of that happening in Oregon. Moreover, the Bill provides for any medical person to refuse to participate on the grounds of conscience.

"Properly resourced palliative care should be much more widely available, to help make the terminally ill comfortable in a caring environment.

"Although it is not a reason for promoting the Bill, we are more likely to get that care if this Bill becomes law than if it does not. That is because there will be pressure, which I welcome, on the authorities to improve palliative care so that patients have a real alternative to assisted dying.

"In addition, the current state of the law is a mess.

But campaigners say the law is old and out of step with public opinion. New guidelines were published by the Director of Public Prosecutions in 2010 and effectively decriminalised accompanying a loved one who goes abroad to die, although it still remains an offence to encourage or assist a suicide attempt.

That happened following the landmark case of Debbie Purdy. She had lived with primary progressive multiple sclerosis (MS) for almost 20 years.

In 2009 she won her case calling for clarification on whether her husband, Omar Puente, would be prosecuted if her helped her end her life. She died in 2014, aged 51, having been in Bradford's Marie Curie Hospice for a year, sometimes refusing food.

Another high profile case was that of Tony Nicklinson, who suffered with locked-in syndrome and was paralysed from the neck down following a stroke.

He was 58 when he died in 2012, having refused food.

His death came a week after he lost a High Court case asking for doctors to end his life.

Last year the Supreme Court gave a direct challenge to Parliament saying legislation needed to be properly considered. Justices said they potentially had the power to declare the 54-year-old Suicide Act 'incompatible' with human rights.

But there are concerns that disabled and sick people will lose vital safeguards.

Alistair Thompson, a spokesman for the Care Not Killing alliance of campaign groups, said: "Changing the law on assisted suicide and euthanasia is opposed by every major disability rights organisation and doctors' group, including the BMA, Royal College of GPs and the Association of Palliative Medicine.

"The Director of Public Prosecutions (Alison Saunders) has done her best, issuing guidelines as to when it is, or is not, in the public interest to prosecute.

"The DPP's guidance on assisted suicide sets out the factors that weigh for and against prosecution, and broadly confirms that compassionately motivated assistance by an amateur will not be prosecuted. That approach is an unacceptable compromise. I do not blame her personally. However, in a democracy it is elected representatives who should make the laws, not an unelected civil servant.

"The status quo is not preventing assisted deaths, nor is it offering proper protection to dying people considering ending their lives.

"Last summer the Supreme Court issued Parliament with a final warning, to address the problems with the current law.

"In his decision on the case of Tony Nicklinson, Lord Neuberger, President of the Supreme Court, provided this compelling analysis: 'A system whereby a judge or other independent assessor is satisfied in advance that someone has a voluntary, clear, settled, and informed wish to die and for his suicide then to be organised in an open and professional way, would provide greater and more satisfactory protection for the weak and vulnerable, than a system which involves a lawyer from the DPP's office inquiring, after the event, whether the person who had killed himself had such a wish, and also to investigate the actions and motives of any assister.'

"Contrast that to what is currently happening, which is often hidden.

"Each year about 300 terminally ill patients in England end their own lives, often in undignified and desperate ways.

"Some relatives and loved ones are hastening patients' deaths.

"Anecdotally, for compassionate reasons, some doctors are complicit in doing likewise.

"It is estimated that about 1,000 deaths in the UK each year are the result of direct help to die by the doctor, at the patient's request.

"Well-to-do British citizens are travelling to Dignitas in Switzerland for assistance to die, at a rate of one a fortnight.

"The law currently denies dying people the choice of a safe, legal assisted death, whilst turning a blind eye to home suicides, and to technically illegal actions by doctors, and to Dignitas deaths.

"A recent editorial in The Economist summed up the situation well: "It is hypocritical because society is pretending to shun doctor-assisted dying while tacitly condoning it without safeguards."

"The law is not working and it clearly does not have the confidence of the public or the courts.

"Some argue that the current law accords with social attitudes.

"I do not know the evidence, if any, upon which that assertion is being made. What I do know is that opinion polls indicate that 82 per cent of the public believe there should be a change in the law to permit assisted dying for terminally ill, mentally competent adults.

"As an MP, as a lawyer, and as an individual, I am convinced that we can do better for dying people.

"At present, it is illegal to assist or encourage a suicide, and the law makes no distinction between the suicide of a vulnerable person, due to depression or problems in their personal life; and the choice of a well-informed, competent, adult who is already dying, to decide to control the manner and timing and location of their own death by their own hand – choice and dignity."