Former Prime Minister Lord David Cameron has backed moves to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults.In an article in The Times, Lord Cameron said that while he had opposed moves to legalise assisted dying in the past, he believed the current proposal was “not about ending life, it is about shortening death”.Previously his main concern had been that “vulnerable people could be pressured into hastening their own deaths”, but he said he believed the current proposal contained “sufficient safeguards” to prevent this.Lord Cameron becomes the first former PM to support the bill after Gordon Brown, Baroness Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss all said they were against it.Brown, a longstanding critic of assisted dying, told BBC Radio 4’s Sunday programme: “An assisted dying law, however well intended, would alter society’s attitude towards elderly, seriously ill and disabled people, even if only subliminally, and I also fear the caring professions would lose something irreplaceable – their position as exclusively caregivers.”Brown stood down as MP in 2015 so will not get a vote but his voice still carries weight in the Labour Party.However Lord Cameron, appointed a peer by Rishi Sunak to serve as foreign secretary, pledged to vote for the bill if it reached the House of Lords.The last time there was a vote on legalising assisted dying in the House of Commons in 2015, he did not record a vote.The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill would allow terminally ill people expected to die within six months to seek help t …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnFormer Prime Minister Lord David Cameron has backed moves to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults.In an article in The Times, Lord Cameron said that while he had opposed moves to legalise assisted dying in the past, he believed the current proposal was “not about ending life, it is about shortening death”.Previously his main concern had been that “vulnerable people could be pressured into hastening their own deaths”, but he said he believed the current proposal contained “sufficient safeguards” to prevent this.Lord Cameron becomes the first former PM to support the bill after Gordon Brown, Baroness Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss all said they were against it.Brown, a longstanding critic of assisted dying, told BBC Radio 4’s Sunday programme: “An assisted dying law, however well intended, would alter society’s attitude towards elderly, seriously ill and disabled people, even if only subliminally, and I also fear the caring professions would lose something irreplaceable – their position as exclusively caregivers.”Brown stood down as MP in 2015 so will not get a vote but his voice still carries weight in the Labour Party.However Lord Cameron, appointed a peer by Rishi Sunak to serve as foreign secretary, pledged to vote for the bill if it reached the House of Lords.The last time there was a vote on legalising assisted dying in the House of Commons in 2015, he did not record a vote.The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill would allow terminally ill people expected to die within six months to seek help t …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
