Campaigners emotionally plead for Assisted Dying Bill to be passed ahead of historic vote: 'I want the option'

The Assisted Dying Bill would legalise the act in England and Wales, allowing terminally ill adults with six months or less to live to obtain medical assistance to end their own lives.

MPs have been given a free vote on the Bill which means they can pass judgment based on their conscience rather than being instructed by their party on how to vote.

Speaking to GB News Political Correspondent Katherine Forster, cancer sufferer Dave said he faces an "uncertain, horrible future", and wants "the option" to end his own life.

Sharing his personal reason for backing the Bill, Dave told GB News: "I've got a cancer called myeloma. I was diagnosed with that four years ago, and the doctors at Nottingham City Hospital brought me back from the brink. They were wonderful and they continue to look after me.

"I'm still on chemo, but it will break through at some point and it will kill me. And I have an uncertain, possibly horrible future. And if I can't cope with it anymore, I want the option to end it. I just want the option."

Campaigner Kate also spoke to Katherine Forster about her motivation for backing the legislation, recalling the horrific ordeal of her Grandmother Doreen taking her own life after having "no quality of life" left.

Travelling from Derby to the protest outside Westminster, Kate said: "My Grandmother Doreen was terminally ill, she had breast cancer. She had no quality of life anymore.

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"She basically reached the limits of what she could endure. She wanted access to assisted dying, but obviously that wasn't available to her, so one night, she took matters into her own hands, and she took her own life."

Sharing how her grandmother's suicide impacted her, Kate continued: "It was my dad and I who had to deal with the aftermath of that, part of which involved identifying her body.

"It will haunt me for the rest of my life, and I will do anything I can to stop other families going through what we did."

A third campaigner at the gathering, Warwick, also backed the Bill, telling the People's Channel about the loss of his wife Ann to stage four cancer, who "witness her own death in slow motion".

Warwick recalled: "As the cancer grew, it pressed against her lungs, she started to get shortness of breath and eventually she was suffocating in our own home. There was nothing palliative care could do about it, she was on maximum pain control, but her issue was one of breathing.

"She was completely lucid throughout the whole ordeal, and she witnessed her own death in slow motion. She slowly ran out of breath and suffocated. Four days before her death, she actually asked the nurse to end it for her, she couldn't take any more. But the way the law stands at the moment, she was unable to do that, and so she died a traumatic death."

He added: "And having witnessed that, I just knew that this was totally wrong. It coincided in that same week with a friend of mine having his dog put down. It was over in minutes, and the dog was wagging its tail.

"And I just thought, why are we treating our animals with such compassion, but for someone that's asking to put out of her pain and trauma, we can't do anything for. That's when I realised the way the law stands is wrong. We are keeping people alive against their wishes because the law says we should, and I don't think that's right."