Jonathan Dimbleby has described the criminalisation of assisted dying in the UK as “increasingly unbearable” after his younger brother, Nicholas, died this month with debilitating motor neurone disease (MND).
The broadcaster, who has long advocated for a right to assisted dying, urged all political parties to commit to a free vote in the next parliament to change the law. He spoke as MPs prepare to publish a report into assisted dying on Thursday amid polling showing three-quarters of the public support legalisation within strict guidelines.
Dimbleby, a friend of King Charles, said the current laws were as “anachronistically cruel as capital punishment”.
He said it was “distressing to see Nick finding himself gradually unable to speak, to have to be carried everywhere, to have to be physically cared for in every respect”.
“The law should be changed so that individuals like my brother, protected by crucial legal safeguards, would have the right to die at home at a moment of their choice,” he added.
His comments come amid a growing campaign for change. In December, the broadcaster Esther Rantzen announced she had joined the Swiss assisted dying organisation Dignitas after being diagnosed with incurable cancer. The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, said “there are grounds for changing the law” and the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, last month said it was “something that does need to be debated”.
In Scotland a bill proposing the legalisation of assisted dying is expected to be introduced for debate in the devolved parliament this year. In October, the Isle of Man parliament backed a proposal to allow terminally ill, mentally competent resident adults to choose an assisted death.
Nicholas Dimbleby was a celebrated sculptor whose works included public statues of the footballer Jimmy Hill and the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was diagnosed with the incurable illness MND a year ago. A strong supporter of the right to die, he contemplated travelling to Switzerland to end his life at a time of his own choosing. He euphemistically called it booking “a skiing trip to Switzerland”. But as his disease progressed he chose instead to stay at home in Devon, surrounded by his family, and died aged 77 on 10 February.
“He was a wonderful, strong person, mentally as well as physically, and he felt this erosion of life very deeply,” Jonathan Dimbleby said. “He showed immense courage but as the disease progressed he endured terrifying choking fits though, mercifully, his final hours were peaceful.”
On Thursday, the health and social care select committee will publish the findings of a 14-month inquiry into assisted dying that attracted more than 68,000 public responses. The MPs heard opponents of assisted dying argue that “elder abuse” could be worsened and that in the Netherlands, where assisted dying is legal, people have been “euthanised, simply because of the symptoms of having a learning disability or autism”. Supporters of a law change said too many people faced “unbearable suffering” that palliative care alone cannot fix.
The last parliamentary vote on legalising assisted dying, in 2015, was defeated by 330 to 118. Kit Malthouse, the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on choice at the end of life, said: “We are getting towards a majority.”
Polling last month found 75% of the British public supported legalising assisted dying for terminally ill adults of sound mind after approval by two doctors, while 13% opposed it.
The campaign group Dignity in Dying wants a law that limits assisted dying to people with less than six months to live. However, a study suggests more than half of more than 400 Britons who have ended their lives with Swiss assisted dying organisations may not be covered by such a law. Less than a quarter had cancer and more than half had neurological conditions, for which accurate life expectancy estimates are often less predictable, the study in BMJ Supportive and Palliative Care found.
Before he died, Nicholas Dimbleby told Jonathan in a BBC Radio 4 documentary: “I shall decide when I stop … I will say I shan’t dwindle to nothing in a miserable way and I shall take control of how I end. But quite when that happens I don’t know. It’s a problem.”
He found “no one in the business helping me wants to talk about this – Switzerland or wherever”. Based on advice from experts, he later decided that as he did not face a painful death, he would stay at home.
Jonathan Dimbleby told the Guardian that in years to come “the failure to achieve this [reform] earlier will seem like our failure to abolish capital punishment … it is a matter of justice and fairness.”
He said he had witnessed “the acute psychological and physical pain” that can accompany death and stressed that granting the right to an assisted death still meant people would have to make an active choice.
Politicians have been “extraordinarily cautious”, he said, adding that he respected their anxieties and the views of those who oppose assisted dying on religious grounds. But he said some elected representatives had been “misled by those who say you can always have a pain-free death” or that “evil people would seek to persuade weak, vulnerable individuals who are terminally ill to accept an assisted death in order to gain access to their funds or to escape the burden of caring for them”.
“If there is any significant evidence of that I am unaware of it from other countries,” he said. “And if there is such evidence it has to be very slight and you can never legislate out crime.”
Dimbleby said he had not become a member of Dignitas, but added: “Perhaps I should. It’s an omission.”
Considering the possibility that the law could soon be changed, he said: “I fervently hope so for the sake of all of us who are still alive”.
