Jonathan Dimbleby tells MPs to 'get off the fence' in assisted dying debate

Jonathan Dimbleby has urged MPs to "get off the fence" on the issue of assisted dying.

- Harriet Sherwood

Public opinion was "overwhelmingly in favour of change", the broadcaster said. After his younger brother, Nicholas, died with debilitating motor neurone disease this year, Dimbleby said the current law was "anachronistically cruel".

Speaking outside parliament yesterday as MPs began a three-hour debate on the law, he said politicians must "get off the fence, don't sit on your hands, have a proper full debate about all the implications, and at the end of that I am sure they will introduce legislation".

The debate, which did not include a vote, was held after more than 200,000 people backed a petition calling on the government to change the law. The issue was last voted on in the Commons in 2015, when it was defeated at second reading stage by 330 votes to 118.

Since then there has been a significant shift in opinion among MPs. Many of those speaking in yesterday's debate favoured change while stressing the need for stringent safeguards.

Opinion polls have shown 75% of the public back legalisation on assisted dying.

Several MPs said assisted dying for terminally ill people was already available to those who had financial means. The Dignitas clinic in Zurich offers assisted dying to non-Swiss residents at a cost of about £15,000.

Many described extreme pain experienced in the last days of their relatives' lives and those of constituents and their family members. The Conservative MP David Davis recalled his mother's "miserable" death from brain and lung cancer, in contrast to a constituent's father who had a "beautiful death" at Dignitas.