Terminally ill Esther Rantzen ‘roared with relief’ after assisted dying vote

Jubilant Dame Esther Rantzen revealed she roared with relief after MPs voted in favour of legalising assisted dying.

The broadcasting legend and lifelong campaigner, stricken with terminal cancer, was too ill to witness the historic Commons debate in person, so watched it unfold while huddled in front of a TV instead.

She was hunkered down in her New Forest bolthole, the retreat she shared with her beloved late husband Desmond Wilcox, who died a “slow and painful death” from heart disease in 2000, and who she still refers to as “My Desi”.

Their Hampshire home is where Dame Esther, 84, who has stage 4 lung cancer, wants to die but current laws prevent her from doing so. 

As the seismic debate unfolded and vote was read in front of a packed chamber, nervous Dame Esther said: “I was at home watching television and shouting with relief when the [result] was announced.”

She added: “We have not yet scaled Everest…but the view this close is inspiring.”

Although the landmark move will likely come too late for lifelong campaigner Dame Esther, her dogged determination to give those suffering terminal illnesses a right to die, with legal protection for their families, marks one of her finest victories. 

Assisted dying is banned in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, it is not a specific criminal offence, but assisting someone’s death can leave a person who does so open to murder or other charges.

Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill seeks to give legal protection to those expected to die within six months who seek help to end their life provided two doctors and a High Court judge verify they are eligible and the decision has been made voluntarily. It requires those who want the right to die to be over 18, resident in England and Wales and registered with a GP for at least 12-months, and have the mental capacity to make a “clear, settled and informed” wish, free from coercion or pressure.

Ms Leadbeater will now appoint a committee of MPs to scrutinise the legislation before a third reading in the Commons and to further votes in the House of Lords.

Friday’s victory, 330 votes in favour to 275 against, was secured after passionate campaigning by terminally ill Dame Esther who was diagnosed in January last year. 

She is being kept alive by “miracle drugs” but does not expect to live to see the law change. 

As things stand the national treasure, who founded ChildLine, Britain’s first around-the-clock telephone helpline for vulnerable children in 1986 and The Silver Line, a 24/7 service for lonely and isolated OAPs in 2013, is banned from ending her life at home and has been forced her to join Swiss suicide clinic Dignitas to where she might “buzz off” if her cancer progresses.

She took up the fight to change the law because of an injustice that could potentially make her three children Rebecca, Miriam and Joshua accessories to murder and facing 14-year jail sentences if they were to accompany her on her final journey.

Giving her first considered thoughts on the seismic implications of Friday’s vote Dame Esther said: “Democracy has spoken. Now the hard work must begin, to put that crucial principle into practice, allowing terminally ill patients the choice to shorten their own deaths. And at long last the voters, the families who have watched people they love suffer agonising deaths, and individual MPs have all been given the choice they were denied so long.  

“In the Parliamentary debate it was a personal choice, a free vote. And as a result a decision I had hoped for but never dreamed would happen. With carefully crafted built-in safeguards, assisted dying will be legalised.

“The debate that achieved this crucial result was passionate but respectful. Kim Leadbeater’s introduction of her Bill set the tone, eloquent and courteous. 

“Over the next months during which her committee will examine each clause, I do hope conscientious rigour will prevail. I pray the MPs will stick to the facts, no matter how strong their feelings, and be truthful about the evidence. No more disinformation about ‘slippery slopes’ which simply do not exist in Oregon or Australia where they have laws like our Bill.  No more inventions like ‘personal coercion’ (which I think means we coerce ourselves. I believe that’s normally described as ‘personal choice’.)  

“No more fears that this will damage palliative care. Other countries have proved that it doesn’t. And I hope that palliative care doctors who support the Bill, and I’ve met some, will have the courage to tell their leaders that the time has come to welcome the sudden new spotlight on their work, that this is not a failure on their part, but that assisted dying can be part of a holistic treatment in the last hours of life, if a patient chooses.”

Before Friday, the last time MPs had the chance to debate the issue came in 2015, but they voted against reform in a vote lost by 330 to 118.

Great British Bake Off judge Dame Prue Leith, 84, passionately support​s reform after watching her brother David die of bone cancer in 2012, and said: “Doing nothing represents a gross abdication of responsibility. There is an inequity at the heart of this debate. If you don’t want an assisted death, you don’t need to have one – you get to have your choice. But I don’t get mine.”

But her son, Tory MP Danny Kruger, has led opposition, saying: “The responsibility lies with Parliament to ensure that only a Bill with adequate safeguards passes into law.”

Tory grandee Kit Malthouse warned: “Given that we are contemplating profound human suffering it would be completely inappropriate for debate to be stifled using procedural manoeuvring. There is strong public support for Parliament to find a way for us to achieve what people facing a terminal and painful ending tell us they want, time and again, and at the same time protect those groups that need protecting.

“Friday showed that everybody played it straight, there was no attempt at trickery or game-playing, and that was recognition on both sides of the argument that there are passionately held views that need to be ventilated and we would be doing great disservice [if they were not]. We needed to have a debate and make a decision.”