FORMER Treasury Secretary Andrew Mitchell has said he intends to bring forward a bill to make assisted dying legal in the UK.

Mr Mitchell said allowing euthanasia is the next big social reform for the UK, which is already allowed in some statutes in the USA, Australia and New Zealand.

He told Tom Harwood during an interview on GB News that he had always been against the move but has changed his mind after listening to his constituents.

He told GB News: “Well, I was always against it, and I thought it was humans interfering in the natural order of things and if you like playing God, but over the years, I have completely changed my mind, mostly from listening to the experiences of my constituents who have come to see me at my advice sessions and have told me about the awful experience at the end of life of people they love, perhaps their husband, or their son, indeed, in some cases, and I’ve sort of cried with them at these appalling stories.

“I’ve concluded that this act of choice that my constituents want at the end of life is what I would want for myself and those people who I love.

“And, you know, I think in Britain, it will be the next big social reform. All the polling shows that 87% of our constituents want to have this choice at the end of their life with very, very strict safeguards.”

Mr Mitchell said that a Westminster Hall debate on the subject following a public petition should be the first step towards legislation.

He told GB News: “What we want to see does not go far enough for some of our supporters, but we want people basically to be able to exercise his choice at the end of life if they are within six months of the time that they will die if they are terminally ill, if they are frightened of dying in pain or in great indignity.

“We think they should have this choice that they and their families can can make together and that’s that’s why so many people have signed this petition and why we’re going to be debating it in the House of Commons this afternoon.”

“Already in Social Security law, there is a way of deciding whether or not someone is within six months of the end of their life but in what we are proposing, the safeguard will be that there will be two doctors who would make clear that it was the individuals decision and also that they are within six months of the end of their life.

“And in terms of whether or not they could be pressured, which of course is a legitimate concern, our proposals would see a High Court judge looking at every single end of life application in this way.”

He added: “In a way, until we have a bill before the House of Common, probably a private member’s bill, the status quo is not going to change and the Government obviously needs to be careful because the Government is neutral…

“The Government inevitably becomes on the side of the status quo and not on the side of change and I think that is an issue for the Government to reflect on but not at the moment because there is no bill, but that could well be the case quite soon now.”