Prue Leith has accused those objecting to legalising assisted dying of ‘scaremongering’.

The Great British Bake Off judge, 81, expressed her support for the Assisted Dying Bill in a letter to the Daily Telegraph.

The view is at odds with that of her son Conservative MP Danny Kruger who is a prominent opponent of the legislation.

Miss Leith wrote in a letter: “Opponents to the Bill fear that grasping children will coerce dying parents to get their doctors to see them off so they can inherit.

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“This is scaremongering. If someone is going to die within six months anyway, which must be the case to qualify for assistance to die, why would anyone risk prosecution to get the money a few months earlier?”

The Assisted Dying Bill would give terminally ill and mentally competent adults in the final six months of their lives the option to die at a time and place of their choosing.

It will be debated by the House of Lords today.

Mr Kruger launched the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Dying Well, which is campaigning against a change in the law.

Earlier this year he wrote in the Telegraph: “The assisted suicide lobby is in a race against time as the case for changing the law is being outpaced by developments in palliative care and as the experience of those jurisdictions that have gone down the ‘assisted dying’ road becomes clear.”

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