Three former Conservative prime ministers oppose assisted dying bill | Help to die

Three former Conservative prime ministers are against the assisted dying bill, it has been revealed.

Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss have voiced their opposition to a change in the law, days before MPs vote on assisted dying proposals affecting patients in England and Wales for the first time for almost a decade.

May is expected to vote against the Friday bill, the Daily Telegraph reportedemphasizing that her position had not changed since she voted against the legislation in 2015.

Even though Johnson cannot vote because he is not a member of Parliament, he said he would not support the bill as it stands. Rishi Sunak previously said he would support a change to the law on assisted dying, but it has been reported that this does not necessarily mean he would support the bill.

Truss told the Telegraph that she was completely opposed to the bill, saying: It's wrong in principle: bodies of state like the NHS and the justice system should be protecting lives, not ending them.

There is no doubt that, as we have seen in Canada, vulnerable people would be under appalling pressure to end their lives prematurely.

The law would be ripe for exploitation by unscrupulous people. MPs should reject this terrible bill and focus instead on improving health services.

Their intervention comes after former Labor Prime Minister Gordon Brown last week declared his opposition, saying the death of his newborn daughter in January 2002 had convinced him of the value and imperative of good health care. end of life.

Writing for the Guardian, Brown said the debate over assisted dying was moving too fast given the deep ethical and practical questions involved and called for a commission to design a fully funded 10-year strategy for improved palliative care and complete.

Tony Blair is yet to express his views on the issue, while Keir Starmer has said he supports changing the law but has also not revealed his position.

However, former Labor leader Neil Kinnock has privately told colleagues that he would support a change in the legislation and would vote for it in the House of Lords, according to reports from the Guardian.

Last night, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said he opposed the bill because of concerns about coercion and feelings of guilt among terminally ill people.

Khan said the London standard: If I were an MP, I would vote against the bill on assisted dying. This is not to say that those who are strongly in favor of it are wrong.

I think it is right that the Government have made this a free vote so that MPs are not flogged. I think it's true that it's a question of conscience.

But I have real concerns about the lack of palliative care available for those who are terminally ill. I have concerns about the state of the NHS.

I am concerned about the state of social services.

I worry not only about coercive control, but also about the guilt terminally ill people might feel. For these reasons, if I had to vote, I would vote against.

Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat MP who is part of a cross-party group of parliamentarians who backed an amendment that would refuse to give the bill a second reading if it is chosen by the president on Friday, expressed concern about the process how the bill should be submitted to Parliament.

Kim Leadbeater, the Labor MP who proposed the private member's bill, told the BBC's Radio 4 Today program that MPs had absolutely had enough time to digest the details of the bill.

She added: If this bill passes second reading, then government mechanisms will start to step in, essentially, and start looking at what implementation would look like. The debate will continue, and the advantage we have is that there are other countries around the world that have adopted some version of medical assistance in dying, and we can learn from that.

The amendment, which could be considered on Friday, was also backed by new Labor MPs Anna Dixon, Polly Billington, Josh Fenton-Glynn and Uma Kumaran, as well as Conservative Ben Spencer.