Danny Kruger MP has warned against legalising assisted suicide and called instead for greater investment in palliative care.

The MP for Devizes takes an opposing view from his mother, Great British Bake-Off presenter, Prue Leith.

Their disagreement on this issue was covered in a documentary for Channel 4 called Prue and Danny's Death Road Trip in which they travelled around parts of North America where the practice is already legal.

Writing in The Telegraph, Kruger said his mum was "wrong" about assisted suicide and the belief that it is possible to "draw a tight legislative line" around the people who would be eligible. 

"My concern is for the far larger number of people who are lonely, depressed, or sadly aware of being a burden to their family and the NHS," he said.

"I think you can't draw a line that will protect them, and I know that modern healthcare, delivered well, can alleviate the physical pain of everyone approaching death. No-one needs to die in unbearable agony." 

He expressed concern about the effect on people in society with "the least agency" and said that the evidence in places like Oregon, which has legal assisted suicide, suggests that the conditions for eligibility are likely to expand.

"The danger posed by assisted suicide is not to people who are used to controlling their lives, who have money and the ability to get what they want from doctors," he said.

"It is to the people whose usual experience is being victimised, whether by social prejudice or by the healthcare system through a callous concern over costs.

"This is not scaremongering. Across the world where assisted suicide is legal, the weak, vulnerable, disabled and the mentally unwell are swept into its net.

"Most chillingly, in every jurisdiction, young people with anorexia qualify to be prescribed fatal drugs to end their lives." 

He called instead for political energy to be focused on improving palliative care, saying that current provision across the UK was "scandalously patchy".

"That - not a law that gives the state the power to decide that some people are better off dead - would be the progressive thing to do," he said.