This Parliament has a once in a generation opportunity to bring the laws around assisted dying up to date, ensuring they are fit for purpose. I believe that Kim Leadbeater’s bill is this opportunity.
Having been a GP for over 30 years I have witnessed firsthand the awful dilemma put before patients and clinicians in the last days of life.
For too long palliative staff, GPs, and community teams have been caught between the law and providing compassionate care for patients, whom we know wish us to curtail their suffering.
The current legal framework, as it stands, is not in the best interest of patients. We must work towards ensuring that people are treated with the dignity they deserve.
I am supportive of assisted dying in defined circumstances and with rigorous, established protections in place.
The criteria that are intended to be included in the assisted dying bill puts in place these protections by ensuring patients must see two doctors who have a full set of their medical records.
These doctors must then confirm that the patient has full capacity, is suffering with a terminal illness (with less than six months to live), and is making this decision of their own free will.
I believe that these patients with confirmed, debilitating, terminal illnesses should have some control over the timing and circumstances of their death without having to travel abroad, unable to share their last moments with their family by their side.
Public opinion is clearly behind legalising assisted dying, and I believe that we must do what we can to support this bill.
Patients should have access to the ability to decide at the most vulnerable moment of their lives. We cannot deny them this choice.
– Dr Simon Opher is a GP who was elected as MP for Stroud this year.