Tony Nicklinson's wife welcomes minister's assisted suicide comments

Tony Nicklinson's wife has welcomed the willingness of newly-appointed health minister Anna Soubry to "stick her neck out" on the issue of assisted suicide law, but said reforms that restricted the measure to the terminally ill would not be enough.

In an interview with The Times, the new Health Minister commented on the case of locked-in syndrome sufferer Tony Nicklinson, who died a week after he lost his legal bid to end his life with a doctor's help.

Anna Soubry, who was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary at the Department of Health in this week's reshuffle, called for greater "honesty" about when prosecutions would be brought for helping relatives to die and that the legislation needed to "evolve".

Ms Soubry said she was ambivalent about that case, and that a doctor should not be required to kill somebody.

"You can't say to a doctor or a nurse you can kill this person."

But she said that it was "appalling" that the terminally ill who needed help to end their lives had to go abroad.