DISABILITIES campaigners will protest against the “very real dangers” of the assisted dying Bill as the Commons votes on it, they announced yesterday.

Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) said that legalising assisted suicide would “remove, rather than give, choice.”

MPs will vote on the divisive issue for the first time in 19 years on September 11, when Wolverhampton South West MP Rob Morris’s Bill faces its second reading.

But DPAC’s Ellen Clifford calls on supporters in an exclusive article in today’s Morning Star to join it in protesting outside Parliament on that day.

“Before we give disabled people assistance to kill ourselves we want the assistance to live,” the group said.

“What doesn’t exist for ill and disabled people is a right to independent living and to the support we need to take part in society with the same life chances as other people.”

The Independent Living Fund gave disabled people freedom in choosing the care they needed to be able to remain living in their communities — until the Tory government ended it last month after 27 years.

DPAC activists unexpectedly stormed into Parliament in June over the decision to axe the fund.

A similar Bill proposed by Lord Falconer, to allow severely ill and disabled people to demand self-administered suicide drugs from doctors, is awaiting a second reading by the Lords.

But Lord Falconer admitted on the BBC’s Daily Politics that assisted suicide sought to help people who felt that relying on others was “intolerable,” rather than those mainly dealing with chronic pain.

Ms Clifford argues that the Bills “trample all over the views of the people who will be most affected by legalisation — health workers and disabled people.”

The British Medical Association and Royal Colleges of Physicians, GPs and Surgeons oppose the plans, as do 90 per cent of palliative doctors.

“An ‘assisted dying’ law sends the message that if you are terminally ill, ending your life is something that it is appropriate to consider,” writes Ms Clifford.

“Meanwhile, it encourages investment away from palliative care and treatment.”

Campaigners raised the case of 64-year-old Barbara Wagner from Oregon, US, who was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer.

A doctor prescribed chemotherapy but her insurance would not cover it. Instead, she received a letter saying that the insurers would pay for assisted suicide drugs.