Read Dame Esther Rantzen’s damning response to a major parliamentary report on assisted dying tomorrow in the Daily Express.
The Commons Health and Social Committee is due to publish the findings from its year-long inquiry.
Dame Esther, who is supporting our Give Us Our Last Rights campaign, has shared her thoughts on the findings and state of play in the fight for a more compassionate law.
The push for a change in the law on assisted dying is now “stronger than ever” with the issue no longer a taboo subject.
Less than two months after launching a petition demanding MPs hold a Commons debate and free vote on the issue 130,000 have backed our crusade.
The Daily Express, terminally ill TV star Dame Esther Rantzen, who was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer last January, and Dignity in Dying have joined forces to end an injustice that affects every family in Britain.
The scandal has seen record numbers, including grandmother-of-five Dame Esther, 83, sign up to Swiss suicide clinic Dignitas. Some 300 terminally ill people in the UK take their lives every year to end their suffering. Assisting a terminally ill person to end their life is punishable as murder or manslaughter and carries a potential 14-year jail sentence.
Sarah Wootton, chief executive of charity Dignity in Dying, said: “The thousands of signatures flooding into the Daily Express petition every day are proof that support for the legalisation of assisted dying is stronger than ever. The British people are demanding change.
“This is a cross-party issue that unites the country like almost no other. MPs must find the courage to act on assisted dying: it’s what the British people are calling out for.”
