LORD Falconer, the Shadow Lord Chancellor, is to try to reintroduce a Bill at Westminster on assisted dying.

In the last Parliament, the Scottish peer proposed legislation, which would have enabled people with less than six months to live to receive drugs to end their own lives; subject to certain safeguards. But the Bill ran out of time.

Now, in light of the Jeffrey Spector case, the peer, who served as Lord Chancellor in Tony Blair's Government, made clear he would seek to reintroduce his Bill, if he is successful later today in the ballot for Private Member's Bills in the Lords.

He explained: "My Bill would allow somebody who's got a diagnosis of six months or less to live, and it's his firm and settled intention to take his own life and he's capable of making that decision, he can be provided with a prescription of drugs that he can take himself, he or she can take themselves, in order to take their own lives."

He added: "I don't know where Mr Spector had got to in relation to the prognosis but, if the position were that he knew that that option would have been open to him later when he was diagnosed with six months or less to live, then he would have been able to avail himself of the rights in my Bill."

Mr Spector, a 53-year-old businessman, who had been suffering from an inoperable tumour on his spine, died at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland.

His widow Elaine and their three daughters Keleigh, 21, Courtney, 19, and Camryn, 15, said that despite their "difficult and painful time", they respected his decision.

Mr Spector told them that he could not face the thought of being paralysed or becoming reliant on them. Last Wednesday, he travelled to Zurich. On Friday, after a final meal with his family, he took a dose of barbiturates and died.