Dame Joan Bakewell says assisted dying episode for BBC was vetoed | Politics | News | EUROtoday

The assisted dying vote in Parliament subsequent month will likely be “a chance to end such needless suffering”, Dame Joan Bakewell has stated.

Writing within the Radio Times, the 91-year-old veteran broadcaster argues that we should always ”assume extra about dying” and plan for the inevitable.

And she reveals that when she introduced the BBC Radio 4 sequence We Need to Talk About Death in 2016, “the episode I wanted to make on assisted dying was vetoed”.

The panel dialogue sequence as a substitute featured episodes on what occurs within the ultimate days and hours of life, how to make sure your needs are recognized and revered, and what occurs to our digital belongings after dying.

Reflecting on assisted dying, Dame Joan says: “As I write, MPs have been told they will have a free vote on a Bill to give terminally ill people in England and Wales the right to choose to end their life (Scotland is also considering changes to the law).

READ MORE: Poll shows majority support for assisted dying as date set for MPs’ vote

“It is just the beginning of a process but with polls showing that around two-thirds of voters in the UK support a change in the law, this is the chance to end such needless suffering.

“Assisted dying has entered the law in many countries including Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand and Australia, as well as Oregon, California and Washington in the US. Some 400 million people around the world have access to such a choice.”

Recent figures confirmed there have been nearly 15,000 folks in England and Wales aged over 100 – greater than double the quantity in 2002.

This makes the query of entry to assisted dying “more relevant year on year”, the Labour peer says.

Dame Joan additionally argues that Dylan Thomas “didn’t get it quite right” when he wrote: “Do not go gentle into that good night.”

In the poem, the speaker urges a dying mother or father to “rage, rage against the dying of the light”. But Dame Joan says this was “not for their benefit but for his”.

She provides: ”The ardour of attachment – youngster for mother or father, brother for sister – so typically overrides the impartial however compassionate concern that anybody you like would possibly die within the biggest consolation with the best peace of thoughts.”

An assisted dying Bill is because of be launched to the Commons by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater on Wednesday.

It is predicted to suggest legalising assisted dying just for terminally sick, mentally competent adults who’re nearing the tip of their lives – the identical change backed by the Express Give Us Our Last Rights campaign.

MPs will vote on the subject for the primary time in nearly a decade when the Bill has a second studying on November 29.