Bill that would make assisted death legal to be debated in Lords amid claims of “huge public support” | UK News

Campaigners for legalizing assisted dying have hailed a multi-party attempt to change the law that is due to begin this week.

A private member’s bill will have its first reading in the House of Lords on Wednesday.

He proposes to legalize assisted dying in England and Wales for terminally ill, mentally competent adults in the last six months of life.

Under the proposal, two independent doctors and a High Court judge would assess each claim.

If their request were granted, a patient could die in a manner, time and place of their choosing.

This is the first time the issue will be debated in Westminster in more than five years.

Despite high levels of public support for changing the law, repeated attempts by courts and parliament to allow assisted dying have all previously failed.

Joy Munns, 56, from Staffordshire, had to support her mother as she stood on trial for the murder of her father, after helping him end his life in 2018.

Dennis Eccleston was in late stages of terminal bowel cancer when Mavis helped him overdose on sleeping pills and pain relievers and then tried to end his own life.

Joy said, “She knew that by helping my father that if she survived she would face a murder charge, so her only option to help her was to kill herself with him.”

She describes the pain of being called to find both her parents in the hospital.

Dennis died but Mavis survived and was arrested and later charged with murder. She was found not guilty by a jury in 2019.

Joy believes that the terrible ordeal her family faced could have been avoided if her father had been able to choose when and where …