GP adviser to Shipman inquiry backs push to legalise assisted dying

The medical adviser to the public inquiry into Harold Shipman's killings has said he now believes that legalising assisted dying is necessary and will protect vulnerable patients.

- Emily Dugan Jessica Elgot

Aneez Esmail was the only medical adviser to the inquiry in 2000 into the family doctor's mass murder of patients - killings facilitated by Shipman's power as a GP. Esmail, who is also a GP, has written to all MPs this week urging them to back legalisation on assisted dying for terminally ill people when the issue is voted on in the Commons next month.

Shipman is believed to have killed about 260 patients, and many have pointed to his case as a reason to avoid legalising assisted death. While working on the Shipman inquiry, Esmail was "implacably opposed" to doctors helping patients die and assisted in creating rules that put clinicians under greater scrutiny. But he said that treating a dying man in extreme pain six years ago had changed his mind.

Esmail now believes it is necessary to have the option to help those in the painful final days of terminal illnesses to die - and that greater regulation accompanying a change in the law would make it safer for patients.

The emeritus professor of general practice at the University of Manchester said: "The law is a mess and it doesn't protect anyone."