UK has medieval mindset over assisted dying - Noel Conway

Mr Conway, 68, who has motor neurone disease, is to appeal to MPs to step in over the Supreme Court decision to reject his case for being allowed to be helped to die.

Speaking from his Shrewsbury home, he said he felt as if he had been cheated.

Supreme Court justices rejected the former lecturer's bid to appeal against an earlier Court of Appeal ruling in his fight to change UK law.

Mr Conway wants medical assistance to die when he has less than six months to live.

Sitting at home and using a ventilator to help him breath, Mr Conway said: "I will now have to go back to parliament. I am appealing to MPs to listen.

"There are 100 million people around the world that can avail themselves of a dignified and humane way to end their lives. We in the UK are governed by a medieval mindset.

"I feel as though I have been cheated.

"For me to have my ventilator removed at some stage would be a terrible ordeal for my family, not knowing how long it would take for me to die."

Mr Conway agreed that the weak and vulnerable needed protection.

"There would be two doctors who would have to testify that you are mentally sound and that you are terminally ill plus a high court judge to oversee that," he added.

Mr Conway lost a Court of Appeal challenge in June against an earlier High Court rejection of his case that the ban on assisted dying was an unjustified interference with his human rights.

He sought to challenge that at the Supreme Court and justices considered his case at a hearing.

But Lady Hale, Lord Reed and Lord Kerr declined permission for an appeal.