Dame Esther Rantzen’s Petition: Should assisted dying be legalised in the UK?

Why are MP’s debating whether legalisation of assisted dying in the UK?

Transcript

00:00On April 29th, MPs at Westminster held a three-hour long debate on the legalization of assisted

00:05dying in England. This debate was prompted by a petition started by Childline founder

00:10and TV presenter Dame Esther Ranson, who started an online petition for the legalization of

00:15assisted dying, which has since gained over 200,000 signatures. Dame Esther was diagnosed

00:21with terminal lung cancer and, back in 2023, she revealed she joined Dignitas, the assisted

00:27dying clinic in Switzerland. During the debate at Westminster, which came to no binding vote,

00:32MPs shared their own experiences. Conservative MP Siobhan Bailey began to cry as she shared

00:37the testimony of a man who had written to her about his mother's death. Yet Conservative

00:42former minister Sir Desmond Swain argued that a law change could lead people to being killed

00:47for simply being classed as old and likened the situation to 1970s sci-fi film Logan's

00:52Run. So with this in mind, what do you think? Do you think it's fair to give people the

00:56choice of assisted dying or is the law too complex to make a fair pass of? Let's take

01:01a look at what the people in our region thought.