The cabinet is bringing in legislation which could ultimately require doctors to organise a lottery of patients if intensive care beds are completely full, hospital care minister Tamara van Ark has told MPs.

The minister wants to stop doctors giving youngsters priority over elderly patients if a shortage of IC beds means life or death choices have to be made.

The decision goes against formal recommendations by the federation of doctors KNMG, the federation of medical specialists and a number of ethics professors this summer.

The doctors’ protocol offers non-medical criteria for admission to ICU for patients with equal chances of survival in case of ‘code black’ when there is a serious lack of beds.

In that case, criteria could include the expected time a patient may spend in the ICU, and age, in blocks of 20 years, up to over 80, the doctors say.

The then medical care doctor Martin van Rijn told MPs at the time he could not support the protocol, and MPs too passed a motion which would stop intensive care teams using age as a criterion for admission.

Van Ark said in her statement that the government was doing all it can to make sure such a situation does not arise during the coronavirus pandemic but that she wanted to be ‘prepared for all scenarios’.

‘Given the basis that all people are fundamentally equal, the cabinet has ruled out weighing up the interests of younger generations against older generations,’ she said. ‘Every life is worth the same.’