A LANDMARK vote by doctors to abandon their opposition to euthanasia was fixed, a Mersey MP claimed yesterday.
Claire Curtis-Thomas, Labour MP for Crosby, condemned the British Medical Association for the late staging of the vote, after nearly half the delegates had left its annual conference.
The MP also attacked the failure to vote on a separate motion that would have maintained the BMA's resistance to terminally-ill patients being helped to die.
And she warned the move was a big boost to euthanasia supporters, who include an independent peer preparing to reintroduce his own Bill to legalise it.
Ms Curtis-Thomas claimed: "The vote was deliberately held at the end of the conference because many doctors opposed to euthanasia had to leave.
"The only other explanation is that the BMA did not believe the vote would be of interest and I don't think many people would believe that. This is definitely a bit murky."
But the claim was ridiculed by the BMA, which insisted the late timing was simply a result of the huge pressure to debate as many as possible of a suggested 700 motions.
A spokeswoman said: "The vote was not fixed. We had a fair, honest and open debate."
The BMA agreed that the criminal law in relation to assisted dying was "primarily a matter for society and for parliament".
Therefore, the motion stated: "The BMA should not oppose legislation which alters the criminal law, but should press for robust safeguards both for patients and for doctors who not wish to be involved in such procedures."
It came ahead of the reintroduction of Lord Joffe's Bill to allow terminally-ill people to kill themselves, after it ran out of time before May's general election.
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