Dame Esther Rantzen says it is a ‘tragic day’ after assisted dying bill is rejected

Dame Esther Rantzen said it was a “tragic day” after MPs rejected the assisted dying bill.

The vocal proponent of a law change, speaking to the BBC via her daughter’s phone outside Parliament, said: “I’m so sad that people in this country won’t have the choice so many terminally ill adults in other countries have of shortening their own deaths by asking for help.

“I am sure a change in the law will come. I am deeply sad that it won’t come soon enough for many of the people who need it.”

Her daughter, Rebecca Wilcox, said she was devastated by the vote, but would not stop campaigning.

She told the broadcaster: “I don’t think it’s a vandalism of democracy, I think it’s a demolition of democracy.”

Dame Estherm who is terminally ill with cancer, had issued a plea to MPs to vote in favour of legalising assisted dying for England and Wales on Friday.

The Childline founder and former broadcaster has been a prominent campaigner for the legalisation of assisted dying, insisting that the law must “change and change quickly”.

MPs voted down the legislation 286 to 270 in a dramatic U-turn on Friday, after previously backing it 314 to 291 in the last Commons vote on the issue in June last year.

The draft legislation had proposed allowing terminally ill adults in England and Wales expected to live for under six months to apply for an assisted death, provided it receives authorisation from two medical practitioners alongside a specialist panel.

Dame Esther revealed in December 2023 that she had joined Swiss assisted dying clinic Dignitas after she was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer that year.

But earlier this week, she said she was “too physically fragile” to travel to Switzerland to end her life, despite having “spent the money and made the plans” to go to there.

She said: “Everything I didn’t want to happen I’m having to go through now, which means that the people I love and care about either cannot visit me, or when they do, see me suffering pain or indignity which will inevitably get between them and our shared happy memories, and may even overwhelm the way they think of me.

“Obviously, I would prefer that my end could be swift and painless and I could ask for help now I’m dying. But I can’t. I knew it would be like this if I died in this country because the current criminal law preventing anyone to help me shorten my death is messy and cruel.”

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