A debate over whether people who have six months to live should be given help to die will take place in the House of Lords today.

The Assisted Dying Bill seeks to enable adults who are terminally ill to be provided at their request with specified assistance to end their own life.

Campaigners say there's more support than ever for changing the law after the British Medical Association removed its opposition to euthanasia.

Suzanne Jee, from Sevenoaks, believes the change would give vulnerable people the re-assurance they need.

She said: "I feel very strongly and passionately about it, mainly because my father took his own life – a long time ago now, in the late 70s.

"He had terminal cancer and he took himself off without telling the family so as not to implicate them, and he died alone in his car and I felt very angry that he had to do that.

"He was in such pain that he felt he couldn't go on and didn't want to go through the indignities of his illness at the end of his life."

She added: "Just thinking from my father's point of view and the anguish that he must have gone through; he was a very brave man but I felt so strongly that he shouldn't have had to do that.

"He should have been properly looked after because we all deserve, I think, to have a dignified death and I'm afraid it doesn't happen in this country for many."

Mrs Jee, who trained as and worked as a nurse for many years after her father's death, said she also had a "considerable minority" of patients under her care who "wanted to end it all".

"They said 'look, we've been suffering for so long and life's becoming unbearable, if only you could give me a dose of something to send me off', and that's always stuck in my mind, and seeing people suffering with intolerable pain," she said.

"Then, three years ago, I got diagnosed with an incurable illness, a bone marrow cancer, and I thought 'what do I want to do?' "It was pretty clear to me that I wanted to take my own life at a time when I wanted to, when pain was becoming intolerable.

"It's not something I want to do. I'm certainly not suicidal, and I want to live as long as possible, but I don't want to go through the last throws and, in the indignity of dying, racked with terrible pain.

"If I don't have to go through that then I wouldn't even dream of going to Switzerland or taking my own life."

She added: "The law as it stands is antiquated and it's such a mess, and people are suffering terribly. There are so many cases of people who are in terrible pain at the end of their lives and they don't want to go to Switzerland because they actually would prefer to die in this country with their family and friends around them.

"I just feel that we are badly in need of a change of the law in this country, which will protect the vulnerable too."

One of the arguments against this change in law is that palliative care has improved and, with pain being better managed today, maybe that is the direction to go in rather than assisted dying.

'That's what I'm campaigning for; it's those of us who are in sound mind that just feel that if pain becomes intolerable then we would like to be able to take our own lives...'

Responding to the argument, Mrs Jee said: "Of course palliative care has moved on so much and, for the majority of people, it's perfectly adequate.

"But palliative care doesn't work for everybody. [Assisted dying] is only for a very small minority and that's what I'm campaigning for, it's those of us who are in sound mind that just feel that if pain becomes intolerable then we would like to be able to take our own lives.

"If I don't have pain, then I shall carry on and have palliative care. That's really the point, I feel."

Mrs Jee said that knowing she could have the option to take her own life, should the Bill be passed, would make her feel "very comfortable and reassured".

She added: "If this Bill becomes law, then there are so many safeguards in place and that would not include young people or people with depression or anything else, it would only cover people who were in this last six months of their lives and were suffering from a terminal illness."

Read more: All the latest news from Kent