HEXHAM’S MP Guy Opperman has expressed his “disappointment and anger” at the rejection by Parliament of a bid to allow terminally ill people to end their lives in this country.

Mr Opperman was one of the few Tories to vote for the Private Members’ Bill to create an “assisted dying” law, which was defeated in the House of Commons by 330 votes to 118.

After the vote, Mr Opperman said: “I am saddened by the result but also angry that people are being denied choice and the freedom to die without terrible suffering.

“While Parliament has spoken, this campaign will continue. Many of my constituents, including a surprising number of churchgoers, wanted this change.”

The proposals would have allowed patients thought to have no more than six months to live, on the evidence of two doctors, and who had a “clear and settled intention” to end their lives, as then confirmed by an independent High Court judge, to be prescribed a lethal dose of drugs on the authority of two certifying doctors.

Mr Opperman’s views on assisted suicide changed in 2011, when he collapsed in the House of Commons with a brain tumour.

Whilst in hospital recovering from a successful operation to remove a tumour the size of a child’s fist from his brain, he became aware of other patients who were facing a grim prognosis.

In a newspaper article earlier this year, Mr Opperman said: “I was one of the lucky ones. During my time in hospital, before and after the operation, many of those around me who were also suffering from different types of brain tumours were not so lucky.

“This time provided the opportunity to contemplate my situation, and the law that existed. Subsequently, back in Parliament and in my Hexham constituency I have met with medics, lawyers, hospices, carers, religious representatives from a multitude of faiths, and groups on both sides of the argument. But my view is now clear: the law on assisted dying needs to change.

“The tragedy is that we now have one law for the rich, and one for the poor. It cannot be right that those who need our support most, at the end of their lives, live in fear and uncertainty of how or where their last moments will be, and whether their loved ones will face prosecution after they are gone!

Mr Opperman argued it was “manifestly wrong” that individual members of the public do not have the choice, and are prevented by law from doing something in this country that they are able to go and do legally at Dignitas, in Switzerland.

He asked: “How can it be fair that wealth determines dignity in death? Where those rich enough are afforded a death in a manner they choose, and yet those who are too poor to escape are locked in the system and have no rights over the ending of their own life?”

He concluded: “This Bill does not threaten the lives of vulnerable people. It will not lead to more deaths, but to less suffering.

”This Bill, above all, provides comfort at a time of great personal sadness and loss. Professor Stephen Hawking, a supporter of assisted dying, has stated that ‘to keep someone alive against their wishes is the ultimate indignity’.