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Sir Geoffrey Warnock, distinguished philosopher, former vice chancellor of Oxford University and Mary Warnock's husband, died in 1995, aged 72. He was suffering from a rare lung disease which was, in Baroness Warnock's words, "incurable and extremely distressing". Sir Geoffrey was treated by local GP, Nick Maurice, who has acknowledged inducing the "easy death" of two patients.

In an interview in The Sunday Times last December Baroness Warnock said: "There was a marvellous Ryder Cup on television just before he (Geoffrey) died. I couldn't have borne it if he'd missed it and it had been my fault. But I was perfectly happy to accept him being given ever larger doses of painkiller."

Recently she said: "He could not breathe properly and was always in fear of suffocating.

"Nick's intention was to make his last days altogether more comfortable by giving him more morphine. It was what my husband wanted." Sir Geoffrey was not expected to live more than another fortnight.

At the time of her husband's death, Baroness Warnock was a member of a House of Lords select committee on euthanasia, which did not recommend changing the law to legalise the practice.