Britain will eventually be forced to change the law to allow assisted suicides, a Black Country MP has predicted.
David Winnick (Lab Walsall North) backed calls for reforms allowing people to seek help in ending their own lives.
His comments followed the high-profile case of Worcestershire man Daniel James, aged 23, who travelled to a Swiss clinic to end his life.
Mr James, from Sinton Green, near Worcester, was paralysed when a rugby scrum collapsed on him during a training session at Nuneaton Rugby Club in March last year.
His parents, Mark and Julie James, face a police investigation after they took him at his request to the Dignitas euthanasia clinic in Switzerland, which helped him to commit suicide.
Mr Winnick said he believed it should not be necessary to go abroad.
Speaking in the House of Commons, he said: “We are faced with a small number of people - it will always be a small number - who take the position, as their health worsens, that they simply want to end their lives.”
There was no law against attempting suicide, but it was a crime to help another person to do so, he said.
“Of course, if they were in a position to commit suicide, that would be quite legal; if they attempted suicide and did not succeed, they would not be prosecuted. Those people are either unable to commit suicide, because of their medical condition, or simply do not wish to do so.
“If I were terminally ill and I decided that I wanted my life to come to an end, I would not wish to commit suicide, perhaps for lack of courage.
“The question arises,: should the law permit those who are in such a condition that they want to end their lives to do so in this country, without travelling abroad?
“That is the nub of the issue.”
