Prue and Danny’s Death Road Trip

In November last year, Dame Prue Leith called on the UK Government to give “proper time” when considering changing the law to allow medically assisted dying.

The Great British Bake Off judge, who turns 83 on Saturday and is a member of the Dignity In Dying campaign group, believes the law should be changed to help those who want “medical assistance to die when they have ‘absolutely had enough of life’”.

One person, who famously doesn’t agree with Prue is her son, the Tory MP for Devizes, Danny Kruger.

As Chair of Dying Well, the All Parliamentary Group, he is also campaigning, but to prevent any change to the law.

Prue appreciates that her son has a “principled stand” on the topic as he feels there is a danger it will lead to people feeling pressurised into an assisted death.

She told Times Radio: “Whereas, I keep saying to him, when you get to my age you speak about death quite a lot.

“I just feel it’s my life and if I want to end it – which I don’t by the way, I’m really keen on my life – but I would like to have the option.”

“I think the law should change. I think we should be allowed to ask for medical assistance to help us die when we’ve absolutely had enough of life.”

Prue also recalled how she watched her elder brother David die in pain from cancer, saying: “He just had the most awful, awful, awful death and it’s true that palliative care can be really great but the truth is it’s not great in this country.

“And there are some cancers and some complaints, the drugs just do not touch.

“There are something like 7,000 people who die in unrelieved pain.”

In this documentary, the pair who are on opposing sides of a deep ideological divide, travel around the United States and Canada, where more than 25 per cent of the population now have the option of assisted dying.

They begin in Seattle, where Prue encounters a situation that she’d like to see in the UK, meeting Sher Franzen whose parents died together, holding hands, at a time of their choosing.

Then, on Vancouver Island, Prue and Danny visit Dr Stefanie Green, one of Canada’s leading practitioners of MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying), who has already helped more than 300 people to die and sees no conflict with her duty as a doctor: ‘to cure sometimes, to relieve often, to comfort always’.

Canada is proposing allowing MAiD for people with just a mental illness, and the pair also meet Dr Ramona Coelho who believes that the Canadian legislation has gone too far and is resulting in the disabled, vulnerable and old to be offered MAiD inappropriately.

Finally, Prue and Danny go to meet John Scully, a former BBC journalist who has suffered extreme depression and PTSD for 30 years.

He wants to be allowed an assisted death when it becomes legal.

At the conclusion of their tour, Prue and Danny debate what they have seen, and whether or not it has changed their minds – and helped them resolve their mother-and-son differences on the matter.