Keep assisted dying laws simple, says Whitty

England's chief medical officer Prof Sir Chris Whitty has urged MPs to not overly complicate assisted dying laws if they are to introduce it.

Giving evidence to a committee of MPs, he said the best safeguards were the simple ones and said there was a risk patients could end up in a "bureaucratic thicket" at the end of life if there was too much to navigate.

Under the bill proposed and being looked at by the cross-party group of MPs, terminally-ill adults in England and Wales with fewer than six months to live would be allowed to end their lives if two doctors and a High Court judge agree.

But other doctors giving evidence said they had concerns about whether the safeguards were enough.

Dr Sarah Cox, of the Association of Palliative Medicine, which represents doctors providing end of life care and opposes changing the law, said: "Me and my colleagues have concerns."

She said accurately assessing how long someone has to live is "incredibly difficult", while identifying when someone was being coerced was not always possible, particularly when it was subtle.

She was speaking after Sir Chris appeared before MPs on Tuesday morning – the first day the committee scrutinising the assisted dying bill has sat. Around 50 witnesses are due to give evidence this week.

MPs voted in favour of the bill in November, but that was just the first stage and it will now go through months of scrutiny and further votes.

Sir Chris told MPs that doctors were accustomed to assessing mental capacity in patients and while determining exactly how long someone has to live was not a "precise science", in most cases doctors could take a "reasonable central view".

He went on to say: "What we don't want is a system which is very difficult for them to navigate so they spent their entire last six months - if this bill is passed and they choose to take account of it, which is a minority - essentially stuck in a bureaucratic thicket.

"We do need to keep this simple and my view is the best safeguards are simple safeguards."

Meanwhile, Retired High Court judge Nicholas Mostyn said he thought it would be "impossible" for the High Court to rule in every assisted dying case.

"The High Court, trust me I've just come from there, has not got the capacity."

MPs were also told there should be a separate service set up to provide assisted dying.

Dr Andrew Green, of the British Medical Association, which is neutral on the law change, said: "We do believe it should not be part of any doctors' normal job. It should be set up as a separate service. It would reassure patients that it is not part of their normal care."

Sir Chris said MPs may even want to debate whether such a service should be entirely separate from the NHS and he warned setting it up would take some time.

He said the two years factored in by the bill was a "reasonable starting point", but added some things may take longer than that.

And he also pointed out that it was important to recognise palliative care was still not of a high enough standards as "we would hope for".

He said while changing the law should not make the situation "better or worse", improving end of life care should also be looked at.