WE MUST GIVE DAME ESTHER HER FINAL CAMPAIGN VICTORY

TODAY the Daily Express urges MPs to grant Esther Rantzen the chance to hear a debate on assisted dying, an issue that matters so very much to her.

- Giles Sheldrick & Ashleigh Rainbird

No one deserves more than Dame Esther to have her final wish fulfilled.

Truly a national treasure, she has contributed so much to Britain with her campaigning zeal. In a significant intervention the 83-year-old wants MPs to think of their loved ones and the peaceful end they would wish for them. The lifelong campaigner has Stage 4 lung cancer and says she wants the right to die how she chooses.

 

Dame Esther did not expect to see this Christmas but she is still fighting to give people with a terminal disease new legal powers, in the most important campaign of her lifetime of activism. She backs the Daily Express crusade Give Us Our Last Rights, which calls for a change in the legislation around assisted dying.

The ex-That's Life presenter - who has signed up to Swiss assisted suicide group Dignitas - claimed politicians were avoiding a debate around assisted dying rights, fearing that the move would not earn them votes.

In an impassioned plea, Dame Esther said: "I would say to Parliamentarians, 'Think of the people you love in your own life, maybe who are older, maybe who are unwell, and think how you would wish them to spend their last days and weeks'.

"It is agonizing to watch someone you love suffer. Nobody wants that for their family.

"And we live in a day and age when it's perfectly possible to offer people a gentle, peaceful death. Make this personal, think this through, and then put it on the national agenda. Debate it carefully. And come, we hope, to a humane decision." Dame Esther and her daughter Rebecca are also prepared to tackle MP Michael Gove over the issue in the festive period.

It's agonising to watch someone you love suffer. Nobody wants that for their family