Ex-prime minister David Cameron backs assisted dying bill

Brown, a longstanding critic of assisted dying, told BBC Radio 4’s Sunday programme: “An assisted dying law, however well intended, would alter society’s attitude towards elderly, seriously ill and disabled people, even if only subliminally, and I also fear the caring professions would lose something irreplaceable – their position as exclusively caregivers.”

Brown stood down as MP in 2015 so will not get a vote but his voice still carries weight in the Labour Party.

However Lord Cameron, appointed a peer by Rishi Sunak to serve as foreign secretary, pledged to vote for the bill if it reached the House of Lords.

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill would allow terminally ill people expected to die within six months to seek help to end their life if two doctors and a High Court judge verified they were eligible and had made their decision voluntarily.

Labour MP Kim Leadbeater introduced the bill, saying the “status quo is not fit for purpose” and her proposals could prevent “very harrowing, very distressing deaths”.

Current laws in the UK prevent people from asking for medical help to die.

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

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

“But this new Bill protects the vulnerable still further, including by making coercion a criminal offence.”

He added: “Will this law lead to a meaningful reduction in human suffering? I find it very hard to argue that the answer to this question is anything other than ‘yes’.”