Prue Leith opened up about the personal reason why she is campaigning to make assisted dying legal in the UK after witnessing the ‘agony’ of her brother’s death.
The Great British Bake Off star has lent her support to changing the law to legalise assisted dying since 2012, when her brother David died from bone cancer.
A new Channel 4 documentary sees Prue and her son Danny Kruger, the Tory MP for Devizes in Wiltshire, discuss their opposing views, as he is against legalising assisted dying.
The 82-year-old South African chef appeared on Good Morning Britain on Tuesday morning from the Cotswolds, while her son MP Danny was in the London ITV studio with co-hosts Ed Balls and Ranvir Singh.
Prue said that watching her brother David suffer in pain made her question why those who are dying are not able to die on their own terms.
Yet the Bake Off judge also acknowledged that going into the filming of the documentary, entitled Prue and Danny’s Death Road Trip, she did not think she would change her son’s mind or vice versa.
She said: “I still feel the law as it stands is just dreadful for dying people. Thousands face a horrible death every year. The law just isn’t working and we should change it.”
Becoming visibly emotional, she continued: “I think many many people have come to the conclusion we have to allow help for dying people who want to die.
“If you see people in agony – and it’s interesting that more nurses than doctors support our side of the argument, because they are the ones that see the agony of dying. Doctors do their round when everybody is full of drugs and feels fine.”
Yet the MP went on to insist that while his uncle, who was 74 when he died, did indeed experience terrible pain while dying of cancer, his aim is to improve palliative care as opposed to legalising assisted dying.
Assisted dying and euthanasia are illegal under English law. The NHS says that a person approaching the last stage of their life has a “right to high quality, personalised end-of-life care that helps you live as well as possible until you die”.
Good Morning Britain airs weekdays at 6am on ITV.
