MSPs have called for a change in the law on assisted suicide following the revelation that a prominent Scottish businesswoman went to a Zurich clinic to end her life.

Two Liberal Democrat MSPs and the seven Green MSPs in the parliament have called for ministers to reconsider a bill which would allow terminally ill patients to end their lives legally at home.

The Herald revealed yesterday that Elisabeth Rivers-Bulkeley, who pioneered the right of women to join the London Stock Exchange, travelled to the Dignitas assisted-suicide clinic in Switzerland in December.

Mrs Rivers-Bulkeley, who was 82, was terminally ill and had less than six months to live when she took a lethal dose of barbiturates in the Zurich clinic.

Last year, Jeremy Purvis, the LibDem MSP, put forward a private member's bill calling for the introduction of legislation similar to that in the US state of Oregon, whereby patients with less than six months to live can have access to assisted suicide.

The bill received insufficient support at the time, but last night the Green Party announced their support for the Dying with Dignity Bill. Nora Radcliffe, another LibDem MSP, also gave her backing to the bill. A similar bill by Lord Joffe in Westminster also failed to make it on to statute.

Forms of assisted dying have been made legal in the Netherlands, Belgium and in Oregon. In Switzerland, it is effectively decriminalised.

Last night, Mr Purvis said the case of Mrs Rivers-Bulkeley highlighted the need to change the law in Scotland. "This shows that people are forced to dreadful lengths to travel abroad to end their lives," he said. "We need to focus on creating a new robust law.

"When someone is coming to the end of a terminal illness it is not humane for them to be forced to seek help out of this country when the law could be changed to allow them to die, with dignity, at home with their loved ones."

The bill proposed by Mr Purvis would allow for a terminally ill patient to obtain a prescription for lethal medication to be self-administered. They must be an adult resident of Scotland, considered "capable", and have less than six months to live.

He added: "The choice of where and when to die for someone with a terminal illness has operated without abuse for over 10 years in Oregon and as the report of the British Social Attitudes Survey recently showed, 80% of people support a change in the law. I think there is now a duty on parliament to consider this in detail, as the people of Scotland expect it to."

Eleanor Scott MSP, Green speaker on health, said: "If a person meets the conditions laid out in the bill, there should be an option that allows for that wish to be respected."

Mrs Rivers-Bulkeley was a columnist and broadcaster of financial advice for women. She and her husband, Major Robert Rivers-Bulkeley, had been living near Aberlady in East Lothian.

The Scottish Executive said it has no plans to change the legislation on assisted suicide.