Dame Esther Rantzen says a free vote on assisted dying would be top of the agenda if she were PM for a day.
“I think it’s important that the law catches up with what the country wants,” the veteran broadcaster told Radio 4’s Today podcast.
Earlier this year, the 83-year-old announced she had been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.
Dame Esther told the BBC she is currently undergoing a “miracle” treatment to combat the disease.
However, if her next scan shows the medication is not working “I might buzz off to Zurich”, where assisted dying is legal and she has joined the Dignitas clinic, she said.
She said this decision could be driven in part by her wish that her family’s “last memories of me” are not “painful because if you watch someone you love having a bad death, that memory obliterates all the happy times”.
However, if she did travel to Dignitas, that would put “my family and friends in a difficult position because they would want to go with me”, Dame Esther told the programme, “and that means that the police might prosecute them”.
Under the law in England and Wales, anyone assisting someone to die or accompanying them abroad to do so can be sentenced to up to 14 years in prison.
“We’ve got to do something. At the moment, it’s not really working, is it?” Dame Esther said.
