Dame Esther Rantzen renews call for assisted dying vote after report...

MPs should be given the opportunity to debate and vote on assisted dying after the findings of a new report, Dame Esther Rantzen says.

The Health and Social Care Committee found evidence it has led to better end-of-life care in countries where it is allowed.

Dame Esther said this showed there is no "slippery slope" when it comes to the impact on palliative care.

But Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson said potential coercion remained a concern.

The Commons' committee's review looked at places where assisted dying for the terminally ill is allowed, including parts of the US, as well as Australia, Switzerland and New Zealand.

The cross-party group of MPs did not rule on a change in the law in England, saying it only wanted to inform debate.

Despite concern a change in the law would lead to poorer support at the end of life, the committee's report said, if anything, it was linked to improvement in the countries to have taken the step, with evidence showing the alterations resulted in extra investment in palliative care.

Dame Esther, who has stage four cancer, said the new report assuaged fears that palliative care could be damaged by introducing assisted dying.

"There isn't the slippery slope that so many are worried about," she said.

The report has cemented Dame Esther's belief that a parliamentary debate and free vote should be held on the subject.

"I'm not demanding that everybody in the world agrees with me, I'm just saying let's debate all the issues now that we've got international evidence and we know the public attitude is in favour," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

But she said she was "disappointed" that the committee had not made a clear call for a vote, saying it "doesn't fit into her timescale".

"This report does not help very much for those of us who desperately want the current law to change for the sake of our own families, and the many others in our situation," Dame Esther told the PA news agency.

The 83-year-old has been campaigning on the issue, including backing the launch of a petition demanding a parliamentary vote, which amassed tens of thousands of signatures over a few weeks.

She added: "If they had said 'we urgently need a Parliamentary debate and a free vote', you know, that could perhaps have fitted into my own timescale, but it doesn't."

The 83-year-old Childline founder and broadcaster has long campaigned in favour of assisted dying, and revealed last year that she has joined the Dignitas assisted dying clinic in Switzerland.

Dame Esther said she wanted to avoid tarnishing her family's happy memories of her by suffering as her life draws to a close.

"The thing that motivates me greatly is having watched the deaths of loved ones around me and seen how memories of a bad death obliterate happy memories and become very painful for those involved," she said.

Current laws in England mean her family cannot join her in Zurich if and when she decides to take that step without facing criminal investigations.

In England and Wales, the 1961 Suicide Act makes it an offence to encourage or assist someone to take their own life.

Separate laws in Scotland and Northern Ireland prevent dying people asking for medical help to die.

Over the last eight years, more than 250 people have travelled to Dignitas to end their lives, according to the clinic.

The cross-party group of MPs behind the new report said hospices in England needed extra money as access to care was patchy.

Currently hospices only receive a third of their funding from the NHS, despite providing the majority of specialist palliative care, according to Hospice UK.

Baroness Grey-Thompson, a critic of legalising assisted dying, acknowledged the findings of the report regarding countries that allow the practice, but said she believes palliative care is a "postcode lottery" in England.

"We need to make sure people are protected," she told BBC Breakfast.

She added further concerns that vulnerable people could be coerced into pursuing assisted dying, and that adequate safeguards were difficult to place.

Assisted dying was not always the "Hollywood death" that some might imagine, she said, and that complications could arise once lethal drugs enter the body.

She said she was not against a debate in parliament, and it was important to keep up the conversation about death.