PROPOSED new laws to allow terminally ill patients to end their lives are “utterly inadequate” and pose a risk to public safety, a former president of the High Court’s family division warned yesterday.

Baroness Butler-Sloss said that safeguards in the Assisted Dying Bill offered vulnerable people “no real protection” from pressure or coercion by others and would put them in greater danger than the existing law.

The Bill, which is to be debated by MPs on Friday, would allow doctors to prescribe a lethal dose to terminally ill patients judged to have six months or less to live and who request it.