I must be allowed to decide when my life should end

THE assisted dying legislation presented to Parliament by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater last week is expected to be limited to those who can prove they have a progressive, irreversible condition that will probably kill them within six months. This means the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, to give it its full name, will be useless to almost all of the 153,000 Britons suffering from Parkinson's disease.

It is nigh-well impossible for a doctor conscientiously to diagnose that a "Parky", as we like to call ourselves. in the advanced stages of the disease can "reasonably be expected" to die within six months. So for us (I was diagnosed in 2020), the existing Suicide Act 1961 will continue to apply.

This decriminalised suicide (believe it or not, people who failed to kill themselves were sometimes charged, convicted and imprisoned for attempted self-murder), but still made it a serious offence to assist someone taking their own life.

In this case, the law embodies a strange, unique contradiction: it is an offence to aid and abet something that is in itself not an offence. The Director of Public Prosecutions lists factors for and against prosecution.

Where the victim had reached a voluntary, clear, settled and informed decision to commit suicide and the helper was "wholly motivated by compassion", a prosecution is unlikely. This means a friend or family member who has taken compassionate steps to relieve a loved one's unbearable suffering is unlikely to be charged.

So England, Wales and Northern Ireland already have a non-statutory permitted assisted dying policy, albeit formulated by an unelected official and only operating within the sphere of criminal law. That policy tolerates assisted dying where the motive is purely compassionate, in accordance with the subject's wishes and aimed at relieving their unbearable suffering. But to do so is replete with risk. If help is given, neither the subject nor the helper will know in advance if a prosecution will ensue.

The person who assisted it has to wait on tenterhooks before the DPP's decision becomes known.

In order to ensure there will be no prosecution, the subject has to have the means to go to Dignitas, must solely make the booking and pay for it themselves, and must get out of the UK unaided before meeting up with their helper.

A practical example is the recent High Court case of Morris v Morris after Philip Morris, 76, helped his terminally ill wife Myra, 73, who was suffering unbearably from an incurable, rare and degenerative neurological disorder to receive an assisted death in Switzerland. Mr Morris had thereby committed the offence of assisting a suicide.

Mr Justice Trower decided to lift the ancient forfeiture rule that stopped Mr Morris receiving a bequest under his late wife's will. He was satisfied Mr Morris was motivated solely by a compassionate desire to respect his wife's wishes to bring her suffering to an end.

But if this current Bill is passed, would Mr Morris be equivalently treated? After all, he would have been defying Parliament by assisting a suicide not allowed under the new law.

Would that not mean that the leniency in the DPP's guidelines would need to be toughened up? We simply do not know.

In my opinion, the state's duty to care for its citizens should extend to facilitating someone who is suffering unbearably to be relieved of their personal Calvary. That is what the Spanish Parliament did in 2021. Today one of the most common conditions cited for seeking an assisted death in Spain is Parkinson's disease.

Parliament should enact such a law here. The current Bill does not go far enough.

The idea such a law would permit "social murder" is ludicrous and looks like a poorly camouflaged attempt to impose a religious ideology about the mortal sinfulness of suicide.

The safeguards in the Bill will be strong and it is impossible to think of any better ones.

Ultimately objectors have to explain by what right they demand to interfere in the decision that I, an adult of sound mind, may wish to take about my life and its ending.

They have no such right and I politely ask them to take themselves and their ideology out of my private life. It is my life and my life alone.

• Sir Nicholas Mostyn, Lord Charlie Falconer and Baroness Helena Kennedy KC co-host the Law and Disorder podcast. Sir Nicholas also co-hosts the podcast Movers and Shakers, about living with Parkinson's.