Keir Starmer has backed calls for a change in the law on assisted dying after the issue was brought to the fore by Dame Esther Rantzen.
The Labour leader added that he believed any vote by MPs should be a free one, because of the “divided and strong views”.
Starmer was speaking after Rantzen, the ChildLine founder and broadcaster, this week said she had considered the option of assisted dying if her ongoing lung cancer treatment did not improve her condition.
The health secretary, Victoria Atkins, earlier on Thursday said the issue was always treated as a “matter of conscience” but declined to say whether she thought it was time for another vote in parliament. “I think that if there was a will in parliament that it will happen, if members of parliament, backbenchers, want it to happen,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Starmer, who backed a change in the law the last time the issue was voted on in the Commons in 2015, said: “On the question of assisted dying, there are obviously strong views both ways on this, which I respect. And that’s why, traditionally, this has always been dealt with with a private member’s bill and a free vote and that seems appropriate to me,” he told reporters during a visit to Estonia, where he was meeting British troops.
“I personally do think there are grounds for changing the law; we have to be careful, but it would have to be, I think, a free vote on an issue where there are such divided and strong views.”
Starmer was the director of public prosecutions when a decision was made not to prosecute the parents of Daniel James. The 23-year-old, who had been paralysed in March 2007 during rugby training, died in a Swiss clinic in 2008.
Assisted suicide is banned in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, with a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. There is no specific offence of assisted suicide in Scotland, but euthanasia can be prosecuted as murder or culpable homicide.
Rantzen revealed earlier this week that her cancer had progressed to stage four in May and she has since joined the Swiss organisation Dignitas, which offers physician-assisted suicide to members with terminal illness or severe physical or mental illness.
She called for another free vote on assisted dying as she felt it was “important that the law catches up with what the country wants”.
Kit Malthouse, the former Home Office minister, said earlier this week that “the sentiment in parliament had moved significantly since 2015”, when a vote was last held. On that occasion, a bill to legalise the practice under strict controls was defeated by 330 votes to 118.
“We are getting towards a majority, yes,” said Malthouse, who co-chairs the all-party parliamentary group on choice at the end of life.
The Labour frontbencher Darren Jones told Sky News on Tuesday that there was a “clearly a demand from the public” to have a debate about changing the law.
“If the public want to have a debate on this, the House of Commons is there to serve the public and so it should be debated,” he said.
