Draft assisted dying legislation expected to be published on Tuesday

The wording of Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s proposed Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill comes ahead of the debate due on November 29 – the first such debate in the Commons in almost a decade.

Ms Leadbeater, the MP for Spen Valley, has already indicated eligibility will depend on how long a patient is expected to have left to live, while both medical and judicial safeguarding is likely to feature in the form of approval from doctors and court scrutiny in each case.

MPs will have a free vote on the issue, meaning that they will be able to decide whether to back or reject the legislation according to their conscience rather than along party lines.

It comes as a group of nurses urged MPs to embrace a “historic opportunity” to change the law, but opposition campaigners have claimed the legislation is “being rushed with indecent haste”.

Seven current and former nurses have sent a letter, published by campaign group Dignity in Dying, to MPs – urging them to support the Bill.

The signatories, including two palliative care nurses, a general nurse and a senior nursing assistant, said: “We are joined by a single wish – all of us want choice.”

They added: “For most, palliative care in hospice, hospital or at home will help them have the death that they want.

“But we feel we have to speak up for those for whom palliative care cannot relieve suffering, or provide the peaceful and painless death that everyone deserves.

“It is these people that need choice, and for them that we urge you to support the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill.”

But Dr Gordon Macdonald, chief executive of Care Not Killing, insisted MPs must reject the Bill, saying “the safest law is the one we currently have”.

He said: “This Bill is being rushed with indecent haste and ignores the deep-seated problems in the UK’s broken and patchy palliative care system, the crisis in social care and data from around the world that shows changing the law would put pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives.

“Indeed, the problems in end-of-life care, which have been chronicled in great detail in numerous academic and official reports, have been explicitly recognised by our new Health Secretary and many other parliamentarians, who want to fix the system, not change the law. We agree with them.”

Health Secretary Wes Streeting has expressed his intention to vote against the Bill, saying he is concerned about palliative care “not being good enough to give people a real choice”.

He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain last month: “I worry about the risk of people being coerced into taking this route towards the end of their life.”

High-profile figures on both sides of the debate have expressed their views.

Dame Esther Rantzen, who is terminally ill, backs a change in the law, while Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and actor and disability campaigner Liz Carr have voiced their opposition.

Any change in the law would not be agreed until next year at the earliest, as the end of November only marks the first parliamentary hurdle.

The plans would still be subject to line-by-line examination in committee and further Commons votes before being sent to the Lords where the process begins again.

It is possible that MPs could vote against it on November 29, as they did the last time changes to the law were considered in 2015, preventing it going any further.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has previously supported assisted dying, but said that the Government will remain neutral on the issue.