Swindon peer Joel Joffe has come under fire for trying to push through a new law to give terminally ill people the right to kill themselves.

Lord Joffe, former deputy chairman of Allied Dunbar, told peers that current legislation was inadequate and caused profound and unnecessary suffering.

Without change, he said, more and more people would be forced to go abroad to die lonely deaths in countries which allowed medically assisted suicide.

His Patient (Assisted Dying) Bill, to allow voluntary euthanasia under strict conditions and safeguards, has won support from a senior figure at the Royal College of Nursing.

But disability groups have reacted furiously, insisting they would fail the most vulnerable and place a duty to die on disabled people.

Lord Joffe, who lives at Liddington said 80 per cent of people backed the change.

The Bill, which received its second reading on Friday, will now enter its committee stage in the Lords, before reaching the Commons later this year.