Britain's ban on assisted dying is a “bad law and should be changed”, MPs have been told.
In the first major Commons debate on the issue in four years, MP Nick Boles called for a public consultation on the rules which criminalise anyone who helps a suffering person end their life.
Later, a junior minister said Justice Secretary David Gauke was “reflecting very carefully” on the demand.
Mr Boles, co-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Choice at the End of Life, highlighted the plight of Ann Whaley, who was interviewed under police caution as her husband Geoff, 80, planned to end his life at the Swiss suicide clinic Dignitas in February.
He asked the Back Bench Committee: “What do we think of a law that criminalises somebody trying to act with love, in accordance with their marriage vows and their consciences? I think it is a bad law and should be changed.”
Paul Blomfield MP fought back tears in a powerful speech about his own father’s suicide after he had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.
He said the law had forced his father into a lonely death. “If the law made it possible he could have shared his plans with us,” he said. “He would have been able to say goodbye and go with his family around him, not in a carbon monoxide-filled garage.
Mrs Whaley, 77, who listened from the public gallery, said later: “The current law is a broken law that is not fit for purpose and I was not morally bound to abide by it.” She said of her late husband: “Some of his last words were, ‘Please, please fight for assisted death.’
But Labour MP Liz McInnes said: “There is a very real risk of a subtle but dangerous culture change in which vulnerable, terminally ill patients come to see assisted dying as a treatment option and, indeed, the best way to stop themselves from becoming a burden.”
