MPs are preparing to vote on a private members bill to legalise assisted dying, brought by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater – the first time it will be voted on by Parliament since 2015
Dame Esther Rantzen has issued a powerful plea to MPs to save others from suffering in a landmark vote on assisted dying.
The Childline founder said it was a “vital life and death issue” that the public “care desperately about”. Dame Esther has been campaigning to change the law to allow the terminally ill to end their lives after revealing she had stage 4 lung cancer and had joined Dignitas in Switzerland.
It comes as MPs prepare to vote on a private members bill to legalise assisted dying, brought by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater. It is the first time the issue will be voted on in Parliament since 2015, when a similar bill was defeated.
In a letter to all 650 MPs, Dame Esther said: “This is such a vital life-and-death issue, one that we the public care desperately about, so it is only right that as many MPs as possible listen to the arguments for and against and make up your own minds, according to your own conscience, your personal thoughts and feelings.”
She pleaded with MPs to attend and vote, adding: “This will probably not come before Parliament as an issue to debate for another decade. How many more will be forced to suffer until then?” Dame Esther said the bill would not apply in her case as “my time is running out”.
However she said many people could not afford the £15,000 fee for Dignitas – and she may have to travel alone to Switzerland to protect her family from prosecution. “Is that really the way our legal system should treat patients and their families at the most distressing time in our lives?” she said.
Ms Leadbeater said the result could be “very close” as she hit out at a “disappointing” bid by MPs to scupper the vote. A group of MPs has tabled a so-called wrecking amendment to stop the bill going to a vote, in a sign of the strength of feeling.
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Labour MP Anna Dixon, one of the co-signatories, said MPs needed more time to look at the details. But Ms Leadbeater said the bill was “absolutely the right route”.
She said: “Sadly, the amendment that a handful of MPs have put forward is disappointing in that the public clearly want this debate to take place, and I think we’ve got responsibilities as parliamentarians to make sure that that debate does take place.”
She said it will get “hours and hours and hours of scrutiny” if it passes its first Commons hurdle on Friday and said the focus should be on people rather than process.
“What I’d actually really like to do in these last few days of debate and discussion is talk about the families, [of those] who are dying horrendous deaths,” she said. “Dealing with people who are taking their own lives, dealing with people who have got no other alternative but to go to another country for an assisted death – if they can afford it.”
The Bill, which covers England and Wales only, proposes terminally ill adults with less than six months to live who have a settled wish to die should be able to do so with the approval of two doctors and a High Court judge.
Opponents have expressed fears over possible coercion and vulnerable people feeling pressured to take their own lives, and called for the focus to be on improving palliative care.
