Dame Prue Leith has explained why she is such a staunch supporter of assisted suicide ahead of a new documentary alongside her son, Tory MP for Devizes Danny Kruger.
After seeing her own brother’s suffering in his final days, the Great British Bake Off star earlier urged the government to investigate the issue and fiercely lobbied for a law permitting assisted suicide.
Dame Prue, 82, campaigned for assisted suicide in a new interview ahead of the upcoming documentary, even saying she would ‘find an unlawful means’ if she were suffering at the time of her death.
This comes after Dame Prue claimed that her late husband Rayne Kruger begged medics for ‘a little help’ in dying.
She stated that Kruger, whom she had been married to for over 30 years until the author died of emphysema in 2002, had desired to go gently.
In a new interview, Dame Prue – who has an opposing view to her son – said: ‘I’ve had a fantastically happy, wonderful life and I wouldn’t want to spend the last three months in agony. I’d want to go out nice and quietly, when I want to, with my family.’
The MP, who co-hosts the Channel 4 show Prue and Danny’s Death Road Trip with his mother, frequently disagrees with her, most recently when he stated that women do not have a “absolute right to bodily autonomy” in a debate about the American abortion ban.
Talking about the new documentary and filming together, Danny added to Radio Times, (via Huffington Post): ‘I have huge respect for my mum because I know she cares passionately about this – she saw her brother die so badly.’
Talking about her brother David’s death, Dame Prue continued: ‘He realised in the end that the only way he could die was just to refuse the antibiotics, which he was allowed to do. But what happens is your lungs fill up with liquid, you’re not able to breathe, so that’s how he died in the end.
‘It was such agony for [the family]. His daughter said that she sat one night with a pillow in her hands when he was right towards the end – when his breathing was getting very bad and he was obviously in agony – and she was just trying to summon up the courage to put the pillow over his face. And she said, “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill my father”.’
While Danny takes a ‘principled position’ on the issue because he fears it would lead to individuals feeling pressured into assisted suicide, Dame Prue last year urged the government to take ‘due time’ when contemplating amending the legislation to enable medically assisted suicide.
‘What I’d mostly like is Parliament to give it proper time,’ she said.
‘I mean, up until now it has been debated in the Commons a couple of times but it’s always a Private Member’s Bill, which can be talked out by filibustering.
‘What happens is the people who are opposed to it – especially which happened in the Lord’s most recently – they just propose all sorts of amendments that they don’t really mean.
‘They just want to talk for two days, in which case it collapses. So it has to be a Government Bill or a Bill that the Government promises will not be talked out, and then people won’t just prevent it happening.’
Read Prue Leith’s interview in full in the new issue of Radio Times magazine, on sale now.