Former Prime Minister Lord David Cameron has supported moves to legalize assisted dying for terminally ill adults.

In an article in The Times, Lord Cameron said that although he had opposed moves to legalize assisted dying in the past, he believed the current proposals “It’s not about ending life, but shortening death,

At first his main concern was that “vulnerable people could be pressured to hasten their own death”, but he said he believed the current proposal included “sufficient safeguards” to prevent this. Are.

Lord Cameron has become the first former PM to support this bill after gordon brownBaroness Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss all said they were against it.

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• What is in the proposed law?
• How does assisted dying work in other countries?
• Will the assisted dying vote pass? This is far from clear
• ‘I’ll probably die before I can make a decision’: terminally ill people on assisted dying

Brown, a long-time critic of assisted dying, told BBC Radio 4’s Sunday programme: “Assisted death laws, no matter how well-intentioned, change society’s attitudes towards the elderly, the seriously ill and the disabled. will change, even if only unconsciously, and I am also afraid the caring profession will lose something irreplaceable – particularly their status as carers.”

Brown, Johnson and Truss will not get a vote on the issue because they are no longer MPs.

However, Lord Cameron, appointed as Foreign Secretary by Rishi Sunak, pledged to vote for the bill when it reaches the House of Lords.

The last time the House of Commons voted on legalizing assisted dying in 2015, he did not record the vote.

Sources close to Baroness May, who also sits in the Lords, said her views have not changed since she voted against legalizing assisted dying in 2015.

MPs will get their first chance to vote on the bill proposed by Labor MP Kim Leadbeater on Friday.

Slightly more MPs have currently said publicly that they would support it, but more than half have not revealed which way they plan to vote, making the outcome hard to predict.

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill will allow terminally ill people who are likely to die within six months to seek help to end their lives, if two doctors and a High Court judge Verify that they are eligible and that they have made their decision voluntarily.

Leadbeater said that “the status quo is not fit for purpose” and that his proposals could prevent “very painful, very distressing deaths”.

Current laws in Britain prevent people from seeking medical aid to die.

The bill would require people who apply for assisted dying to:

• Be over 18 years of age, resident in England and Wales and registered with a GP for at least 12 months
• Have the mental capacity to make a decision about ending your life
• Express a “clear, settled and informed” desire to be free from coercion or coercion at each stage of the process.

Writing in The Times, Lord Cameron said: “Many of these safeguards will be familiar from previous proposals.

“But this new bill further protects vulnerable people, including making coercion a criminal offence.”

He added, “Will this legislation lead to a meaningful reduction in human suffering? It is very difficult for me to argue that the answer to this question is anything other than ‘yes’.”

However, some people have raised concerns that terminally ill people may still feel pressure to end their lives.

Dr Rachel Clarke, a palliative care specialist working in the NHS, told BBC Radio 4’s Today program that the “volatile” nature of end-of-life care means some people “can be made to feel burdened” or have to endure the pain Which can be avoided. With better treatment.

GP Dr Jess Harvey said there would also be practical issues in introducing assisted dying into an “already overloaded and overwhelmed NHS system”.

He told the program it would cost “almost a new specialist area” to set up and questioned whether the money would be better invested in improving palliative care.