Dr Andrew Green, deputy chairman of the British Medical Association’s (BMA) ethics committee, called for assurances that legislation would provide doctors a choice to opt-in to carrying out assisted dying.

He told the Radio 4 Today programme: “The main requirement was that we would want doctors to be given a real genuine choice about whether and to what extent they would be willing to participate.

“There would need to be an opt-in arrangement. It wouldn’t be part of any doctor’s normal job to provide physicians’ assisted dying.”

The BMA has shifted from a position against assisted dying to one of neutrality.

He said: “As a representative organisation we have a duty to represent all those people’s views and that’s why we changed to a position of neutrality.”