POLITICIANS have been urged to bring in new legislation south of the Border to give doctors the right to be able to help the terminally ill die.

The year-long Commission on Assisted Dying, chaired by Lord Falconer, has backed recommendations for reforms that would give adults with less than one year to live the right to ask their doctor for a lethal dose of medication that would end their life.

However, in a report published today, the body cautioned that stringent safeguards would have to be put in place to protect those who might not have the mental capacity to make such a choice, or were clinically depressed or under pressure from friends and relatives.

Scottish right-to-die campaigners, led by the independent MSP Margo MacDonald, backed the report's recommendations, claiming it had once again put on the agenda attempts to change the legislation.

Ms MacDonald, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, is weeks away from re-launching a Bill at Holyrood to give Scots the right to assisted suicide after her last attempt was rejected by fellow MSPs.

She said: "Public opinion can't be ignored. Politicians will have to face it, and I think they will have to reflect a bit more what their constituents think rather than certain organised groupings of their constituents, whether they be faith groupings or otherwise.

"For me, it's a human rights issue. People have the right to determine whether or not they want assistance to end their life earlier than nature would. I think that's a right – it's the sort of decision they make throughout their whole life and I don't see why the last act of their life should be any different.

"No-one is bound to help them, whether a professional person or a lay person, but they should know that they can ask someone, and that person can accede to their request without being penalised and criminalised."

The commission said MPs should consider developing a new legal framework for assisted dying, saying the "current legal status of assisted suicide is inadequate, incoherent and should not continue".

The report found "there is a strong case for providing the choice of assisted dying for terminally ill people".

"It is possible to devise a legal framework that would set out strictly defined circumstances in which terminally ill people might be assisted to die, supported by health and social care professionals, and which would employ robust upfront safeguards to prevent inappropriate requests that did not meet the eligibility criteria from going ahead."

It added: "A person who provided assistance when the strictly defined circumstances were not present would be liable to be prosecuted for the crime of assisting suicide."

It also called for more choice, saying clear and accessible information should be provided to those who want to die, linked to "the principles of improving open discussion and improving access to high quality end-of-life care".

The right-to-die advocate, Dr Libby Wilson, said the report was a step in the right direction.

However, the former GP was critical of the 12-month stipulation, which she said would exclude many patients with degenerative conditions that destroyed their mental and physical faculties while having more than one year to live.

She said: "This is supposed to be about compassion. Why is your compassion limited by a timeframe?

"If you've got some horrible disease like motor neurone disease or the last stages of multiple sclerosis or Parkinson's disease, you can go on living and suffering very severely for perhaps years, and yet compassion can't extend to those people. I'm all for it in one sense – if indeed any notice is taken of it in the House of Lords – but from an ethical point of view I don't understand it, especially with neurological diseases.

"There's a terrible disease called Huntington's disease which is genetic, where your brain just eventually disintegrates and you become paralysed, and you also become demented. And of course the people who inherit it have already seen their parents, aunts and uncles and so on die of it."

Under Scots law an act of euthanasia by a third party, including physician-assisted suicide, is regarded as the deliberate killing of another, and would be dealt with under the criminal law relating to homicide.

A Scottish Government spokesman said: "While it is right that a patient who suffers from a life-limiting illness should receive the best palliative and end-of-life care available, deliberate taking of life remains illegal and there are no plans to change this."

BMA Scotland said it was "firmly opposed to the legalisation of assisted dying".

One member of the 11-person commission, the Reverend Canon Dr James Woodward, said he was unable to back its majority decision. He said the right time to consider changing the law was after a greater ethical, moral and social consensus had been generated on the issue.

Care not Killing, an anti-euthanasia group, said changes to the law could lead to around 13,000 deaths a year. Campaign director Dr Peter Saunders said the commission was paid for by those in favour of the right to die, with panel members "handpicked" by Lord Falconer, who they described as a "leading advocate" of changing the law, and the campaigners Dignity in Dying.