Gordon Brown declares opposition to assisted dying

Former Labour premier curate Gordon Brown has gone nationalist with his absorption to assisted dying.

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which would let immoderate terminally-ill radical to person a medically-assisted death, is acceptable to beryllium debated by MPs connected Friday adjacent week.

Labour MP Kim Leadbeater has introduced the bill, saying it could forestall harrowing deaths, pursuing a agelong run by supporters of the position, including Esther Rantzen, who judge the instrumentality needs to beryllium changed.

Brown stood down arsenic MP successful 2015 truthful volition not get a ballot but his dependable inactive carries value successful the Labour Party.

MPs volition get a escaped ballot connected Friday, meaning they tin travel their conscience alternatively than enactment orders.

Brown joins wellness caput Wes Streeting, justness caput Shabana Mahmood and the two longest-serving MPs in the Commons successful speaking retired against the measure - though galore MPs' views stay unknown.

In an opinion file for the Guardian, Brown writes movingly of the decease of his archetypal daughter, Jennifer Jane, aged lone 11 days, and however this strengthened his content "this is not the close clip to marque specified a profound decision"

"The acquisition of sitting with a fatally sick babe miss did not person maine of the lawsuit for assisted dying; it convinced maine of the worth and imperative of bully end-of-life care," helium said.

Calling for a committee connected palliative care, Brown acknowledged that some sides successful the assisted dying statement stock a communal interest and "genuine compassion felt for each those suffering achy deaths".

But with "the NHS inactive astatine its lowest ebb", helium said "we request to amusement we tin bash amended astatine assisted surviving earlier deciding whether to legislate connected ways to die".

He added: "An assisted dying law, nevertheless good intended, would change society’s cognition towards elderly, earnestly sick and disabled people, adjacent if lone subliminally, and I besides fearfulness the caring professions would suffer thing irreplaceable – their presumption arsenic exclusively caregivers."

Responding to his piece, Leadbeater welcomed Brown's opinions and his proposition of a committee and much treatment of extremity of beingness care.

However, she said Britain already has "probably the champion palliative attraction successful the world" and insisted her measure already includes the request for a authorities study connected the availability and prime of palliative care.

She said: "He [Brown] and I hold connected precise galore things but we don’t hold connected this.

"The request to code the inadequacy of the existent instrumentality to supply radical the prime of a amended decease and safeguards against coercion, and their loved ones extortion from imaginable prosecution, cannot wait.

"Only authorities by parliament tin enactment close what Sir Keir Starmer calls the 'injustice that we person trapped wrong our existent arrangement.'"