Westminster Hall packed for a debate emotional debate on assisted dying

Westminster Hall was packed for a debate yesterday afternoon which saw MPs give impassioned speeches for and against legislative change.

Dame Esther Rantzen was praised for her role in bringing the conversation to the fore, having revealed in December that she has joined the Swiss Dignitas clinic as she lives with stage four cancer.

It is the campaign that has most touched a nerve with people throughout the broadcaster’s long career, the debate heard.

A petition backed by Dame Esther as part of a Daily Express campaign gained more than 200,000 signatures to see the topic again debated at Parliament.

Opening the Westminster Hall debate, Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, a member of the Petitions Committee, said public opinion on assisted dying “has shifted in one direction”, citing polls by Dignity in Dying showing “overwhelming support for law changes with safeguards in place” and a rise in UK members of Dignitas.

The issue was last voted on in the Commons in 2015, when it was defeated at second reading by 330 votes to 118.

Yesterday’s debate has no vote, but is a chance for MPs to share their own and their constituents’ views on the issue.

Conservative MP Siobhan Baillie began to cry as she shared the testimony of a man who had written to her about his mother’s death.

She said the man’s mother had “considered taking her own life as her best friend had actually done”, but did not, despite being deeply unwell, and had then taken 16 weeks to die “effectively from starvation”.

She said it is not “necessarily coercion” but rather “the way that people feel in a society that changes the law”.

Conservative former minister Sir Desmond Swayne likened the situation to 1970s science fiction film ‘Logan’s Run’, saying a law change could lead to people being killed simply because they are old.

He told the debate: “There is a profound danger in my view that what begins as a choice will end as an expectation, and so proceeding you will end up with Matthew Parris, and then it is not much of a jump until you are at Logan’s Run. Don’t know what it is? Google it.”

But fellow Tory Kit Malthouse rejected a view he said was being presented of a country “teeming with granny killers, all of us waiting just to bump off a wealthy relative so we can pocket the cash, like we’re some kind of nation of Jeremy Bambers, intent on remunerating ourselves”.

He insisted “the vast majority of the British people, they love their parents, they love their grandparents, they want the best for them” and said any new law should have safeguards.

Demonstrators on both sides of the debate had gathered outside Parliament ahead of the argument, with broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby among them.

In an interview with the PA news agency, he said politicians must “get off the fence” and commit to a “proper, full debate”.

He has previously described the current law as “increasingly unbearable” after the death of his younger brother Nicholas, who suffered with motor neurone disease (MND).

Dr Gordon Macdonald, chief executive of the campaign group Care Not Killing, described yesterday’s debate as a missed opportunity to talk about fixing the UK’s palliative and social care system.