Ed Davey talks about caring for his sick mother and says he will vote against the assisted dying bill

Lib-Dem leader sir Ed Davey has revealed that caring for his dying mother as a teenager convinced him to commit suicide, as MPs prepare for a historic vote on the issue.

In a moving interview, the former minister spoke of his fears that the terminally ill, people with disabilities and others “could feel under real psychological pressure to end their lives”.

His mother had been in a lot of pain towards the end of her life, he said, revealing that she had a “very, very painful disease”.

But he said it was during those last days that I came to the conclusion that we shouldn’t have this… we should focus on better palliative care.

The ministers are divided over a bill assisted in dyingwhich parliamentarians will vote on at the end of this month.

Ed Miliband, the energy minister, said on Tuesday he supported the move to make assisted suicide legal. But the two state secretaries who will be responsible for a new law have expressed their opposition.

Health Minister Wes Streeting has said he plans to vote against the bill because he fears coercion and people feeling they have “an obligation to die.”

Shabana Mahmood, the justice minister, has also spoken out against assisted dying and voted against it in 2015.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby has also warned legalization would lead to a “slippery slope” when it comes to who qualifies.

Sir Keir Starmer has indicated that he has yet to decide on the bill, although he has spoken in favor of the idea in the past.

The new assisted dying bill claims to be the “most robust” in the world.

Only terminally ill adults who have less than six months to live and a firm desire to end their life are eligible.

The Labor MP behind the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill said hers was the only bill in the world with “three layers of scrutiny” – an endorsement by two doctors and one High Court judge.

Kim Leadbeater said the proposed legislation for England and Wales would provide the “safest choice” for mentally competent adults at the end of life, and insisted it was robust enough to protect against coercion.

But critics claim the proposed legislation is being “rushed with indecent haste” and that MPs will not have enough time to properly scrutinize it before the November 29 debate and vote.

In an interview with the BBC Today programme, Sir Ed said that as a society he believed “we need to talk about death more”.

But he said that, “after struggling with this issue for most of my life, he feared that too many people would be “under real psychological pressure to end their lives… that they would be setting themselves up for might feel burdened. And I think if we make this decision, those people would be less free because of that psychological burden.”

He added: “I had to look after my mother when she was terminally ill as a young teenager… she had a very, very painful illness.”

When I was there at the end of her life, I came to the conclusion that we shouldn’t have this (assisted dying). We need to focus on better palliative care.

He warned that a combination of people feeling burdened and the problems in the palliative care system could leave people “feeling like they have no choice but to end their lives”.

Sir Ed, who also spoke about his disabled son, said he wanted “a society where those people feel valued. I want people with disabilities to feel more valued. And I really think this approach…could undermine that.”