Esther Rantzen’s daughter Rebecca speaks to GMB

Dame Esther Rantzen’s daughter Rebecca Wilcox appeared on Good Morning Britain today, on the day Scotland reaches an important milestone towards an assisted dying law.

If passed, the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill would permit medical assistance for people wishing to end their lives. Host Susanna Reid asked Rebecca how she and her mum – who has stage four lung cancer and is campaigning for assisted dying – feel about Scotland’s proposed legislation and whether it could lead to a UK-wide proposal and Rebecca said, “I think so. Scotland, you are amazing, you make all the right decisions. I wish I was Scottish.”

She added, “The caveat that breaks my heart is that you have to have lived in Scotland for a year to be able to take up this legislation and be able to choose the way you want to die, choose a painless death, choose a dignified death if you have a terminal illness. Because obviously, who knows how long mum has left, but she doesn’t have enough time to move to Scotland to be there for a year, plus this bill probably won’t go through until next year.”

“So again, everybody that I’m meeting in the Dignity in Dying campaign  – they are so brave and brilliant at telling their story and yet none of this is going to help them right now.”

Rebecca went on to tell Susanna and Richard Madeley she doesn’t “understand” why Scotland, in a rare instance, is so “far ahead” of England on this matter.

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She said, “It makes me really sad that my country cannot see that this is the right approach. It has all the caveats to protect the vulnerable people. It doesn’t allow for the type of euthanasia people worry about. It’s assisted dying and assisted suicide for people with a terminal diagnosis who have been found sound of mind by two separate doctors. It doesn’t make sense to not say yes to it.”

Susanna asked if changes could be made in England in four or five years’ time, could it leave time for Rebecca’s mum and she said, “I think Sir Keir Starmer said it would be within five years… medicine is incredible. Things are not certain, but I think we can pretty much say that won’t help my mum and it won’t help lots of people who are going through what they’re going through today.”

She added, “I think if anybody wanted to become the next Prime Minister, obviously I’m not a political guru, but every single UK constituency was polled and in every single one the majority was for assisted dying. It seems like a no brainer to me. The movement in the UK is shifting towards it. Everybody seems to be behind it. It’s something that affects all of us and as long as we have the caveats and to protect the vulnerable people, to make sure that people don’t feel that they should be pushed towards this decision, or make the decision for somebody else, as long as we have that in place, it should be fine.”

Good Morning Britain weekdays from 6am on ITV1 & ITVX