Campaigners are pleading with MPs to reject proposals to legalise assisted suicide, warning that any change to the law will put vulnerable people at risk. 

They have expressed concern about how little time MPs have to scrutinise details of Kim Leadbeater's bill just two weeks before a vote is held. This is considerably shorter than the nearly two months MPs had when the issue was last voted on in Parliament in 2015. 

"More than half of the current sitting MPs were newly elected at the General Election this year, and have spent much of that time since the election on recess," said Right to Life UK.

"This means they have had very little time to hear from both sides of the debate on this significant change to the law - and now they will be only given barely two weeks to scrutinise the Bill."

While Leadbeater has sought to promise "the strictest safeguards anywhere in the world", over 3,400 doctors and nurses have signed an open letter to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer saying that it is "impossible for any Government to draft assisted suicide laws which include protection from coercion and future expansion".

"The NHS is broken, with health and social care in disarray. Palliative care is woefully underfunded and many lack access to specialist provision," they say in the letter organised by campaign group Our Duty of Care.

"The thought of assisted suicide being introduced and managed safely at such a time is remarkably out of touch with the gravity of the current mental health crisis and pressures on staff.

"Any change would threaten society's ability to safeguard vulnerable patients from abuse; it would undermine the trust the public places in physicians; and it would send a clear message to our frail, elderly and disabled patients about the value that society places on them as people."

Dr Gordon Macdonald, chief executive of Care Not Killing, said: "This bill is being rushed with indecent haste and ignores the deep-seated problems in the UK's broken and patchy palliative care system and the crisis in social care as highlighted by thousands of medics who signed the open letter to the Prime Minister, published this morning.

"It also ignores data from around the world that shows changing the law would put pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives.

Leadbeater's Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill says that applications for medically-assisted suicide will need to be reviewed by two doctors before being approved by a judge. An initial debate and vote on the proposals will take place on 29 November.

Starmer, who backed legislation to legalise assisted suicide in 2015, is yet to make up his mind about how he will vote.

"I'm not going to be putting any pressure whatsoever on Labour MPs. They will make their own mind up, as I will be," he said.

"Obviously a lot will depend on the detail, and we need to get the balance right. But I've always argued there will need to be proper safeguards in place."

Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said it was "outrageous" that the bill had only been published two weeks before a vote. 

"What is being proposed is a monumental change to our laws, and it's totally unjustifiable and fundamentally undemocratic to try and rush it through without proper public scrutiny," she said.

"With an NHS described by the sitting Health Secretary as 'broken', and the 100,000 people who need palliative care each year dying without receiving it, this rushed assisted suicide legislation is a disaster in waiting."