Campaigners for and against assisted dying make feelings known at Westminster
Dame Prue Leith, Dame Esther Rantzen's daughter, Rebecca Wilcox, and the broadcaster, Jonathan Dimbleby, were among the high-profile figures supporting the Bill to change the law in England and Wales.
Members of the Dignity in Dying campaign wore pink and held placards in memory of friends and family members.
Those opposed to the Bill included groups dressed as scientists in white lab coats and bloodied gloves and masks, as well as nuns and other members of religious organisations.
The mood amongst campaigners was largely calm and respectful on both sides.
Dame Prue told the PA news agency she was 'both nervous and confident' about the outcome.
'It's so moving to see all these people with placards of people they've lost or people who are dying of cancer,' she said.
'It's hard not to cry because I think they have done such a good job. Let's hope we've won.'
Mr Dimbleby said he believed the Bill would be 'transformative'.
He added: 'What it will mean is millions of people will be able to say to themselves, 'If I'm terminally ill, I will be able to choose, assuming I am of sound mind and I am not being coerced, to say 'Yes, I want to be assisted – I have dignity in death'.'
Rebecca Wilcox, the daughter of Dame Esther, said: 'It couldn't be a kinder, more compassionate Bill that respects choice at the end of life, that respects kindness and empathy and gives us all an option when other options, every other option, has been taken away, and it would just be the perfect tool for a palliative care doctor to have in their med bag.'
Teachers Catie and Becky Fenner said they wanted other families to benefit from the Bill.
Their mother, who had motor neurone disease, had flown to Dignitas in Switzerland to end her life at a cost of £15,000. The sisters said they did not get to properly say goodbye and grieve and worried about the legal repercussions.
Catie, 37, said: 'We were left quite traumatised by the whole experience – not only seeing a parent go through a really horrible disease but then the secrecy of the planning.'
Campaigners against the Bill, who were gathered outside Parliament, chanted 'We are not dead yet' and 'Kill the Bill, not the ill'.
A display was erected with a gravestone reading 'RIP: The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. Bury it deep', and behind were two mounds meant to resemble graves.
Andrew Hilliard, 75, said he was opposed for religious reasons. He was dressed in a white lab coat with a placard reading: 'Protect our NHS from becoming the National Suicide Service'.
The chief executive of Care Not Killing, Dr Gordon Macdonald, said MPs should prioritise improving palliative care.
He said: 'Most people, when thinking about the practical implications of this, for those most vulnerable, they change their minds.'
George Fielding, a campaigner affiliated with the Not Dead Yet group which is opposed to assisted dying, said he attended to represent disabled people.
He said: 'This Bill will endanger and shorten the lives of disabled people.'
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
14 minutes ago
- Yahoo
‘My cancer symptoms were mistaken for signs of menopause – now I'm unable to walk'
A woman has been left unable to walk after her spinal cancer symptoms were mistaken for signs of the menopause and a gardening injury. Karen Davey, 54, from Cornwall, began experiencing hot flushes, fatigue, and loss of appetite in early 2024, but she assumed these were menopause symptoms. But by March 2024, she developed pain in her kidneys and went to visit her GP. However, she was told the back pain was due to gardening, despite having only done 20 minutes of this. Over the next two months, her symptoms worsened and she stopped eating properly, lost weight, and developed a temperature, later losing all sensation in her legs, as well as bladder and bowel function. After being taken to the hospital and admitted for two weeks, she was given the devastating news that she had stage four non-Hodgkin lymphoma in her kidneys, and a tumour wrapped around her spinal cord. After one round of radiotherapy and further chemotherapy, she is now in remission. However, she has been left unable to walk. The 'life-changing' impacts of the cancer have meant she has to reduce her working hours to four a week, while her husband has given up work to be a full-time carer. Ms Davey told the Spinal Injuries Association she felt her symptoms were 'dismissed' by her GP and continued to be dismissed until she was admitted to hospital. She said: 'I'd gone from somebody who was quite active before. I'd do a lot of hiking across the moors, I used to go cold-water swimming all year round. One of the last things I did before I got ill was an abseil off a 120-foot viaduct. 'This isn't what I'm supposed to be doing at this time of life. I've not yet been able to get back to driving or anything like that. I'm completely reliant on my husband; it's messed up my social life, just going out to meet friends or going swimming or popping into town to look around the shops. Emotionally, it's just completely messed me up.' Ms Davey said she wanted to spread awareness of her situation and help others who might be experiencing similar symptoms. She said, 'I had no idea that hot flushes would lead to all this. The symptoms you've got aren't always menopause symptoms, and we need to be more mindful of that. 'I just get annoyed that it was attributed to menopause and doing gardening when it needed looking into a bit more. I didn't know anything about spinal cord injury and when my toes started going tingly, it didn't occur to me that that's what it was. There's not enough information.' Spinal Injuries Association supports people living with spinal cord injuries. Dharshana Sridhar, campaigns manager at the association, said: 'Karen's story is a powerful reminder that women's health symptoms should never be dismissed or explained away without proper investigation. 'Too often, women with spinal cord injuries face delays in diagnosis and unnecessary barriers to equitable care, leaving them to cope with life-changing consequences that could have been prevented. Across the board, women's concerns are frequently overlooked and when disability or other intersecting factors are involved, the barriers to timely diagnosis and treatment become even greater. Through our women's health campaign, we're calling for better awareness, earlier diagnosis, and accessible healthcare for every woman, no matter her disability."
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Patriotism ‘always important' to Starmer, says No 10 amid flag row
Patriotism 'will always be an important thing' to Sir Keir Starmer, Downing Street has said, after St George's Cross flags were removed from council properties by two local authorities. Flags have been taken down in Tower Hamlets in east London as well as Birmingham. On Monday, St George's cross flags were pictured on the A1206 on the Isle of Dogs in the east of the capital, after campaigners attached them following an online movement called 'Operation Raise the Colours'. BirminghamLive also reported flags that have been flown in areas of the city have been removed by the local council. Asked what the Prime Minister's view is on the councils that have removed the flags, Sir Keir's official spokesman said on Monday: 'I think the PM has always talked about his pride of being British, the patriotism he feels. 'I think he's talked about that previously […] not least recently in relation to the Lionesses' successful campaign in the Euros. 'Patriotism will always be an important thing to him.' Asked if Sir Keir is supportive of people who put up English flags, the spokesman said: 'Absolutely, patriotism, putting up English flags. 'We put up English flags all around Downing Street every time the English football team – women's and men's – are out trying to win games for us.' Residents saw Manchester Road in Tower Hamlets, east London, lined with St George's flags over the weekend but only a few remained by Monday. Walking along the busy inner city street on Monday lunchtime, one local resident who did not want to give his name said: 'They were all along the street, lots of them. It looked nice really. It was very colourful. 'I saw them late on Saturday. They just appeared and only noticed they have all gone now.' His neighbour said: 'They all went up at the weekend and have come down now.' She added that she did not feel threatened or scared, but it was definitely a 'very pointed act'. The local resident, who did not want to be named, said: 'It was right they should come down as I think it was after the demonstration about asylum.' She said 'it was not about community', adding that normally when you see flags go up it is around a celebration or about bringing people together. 'There was no noise or trouble about it. They just went up and I did not see anyone take them down.' She added: 'It was OK. I know a lot of people like it and it was bright.' Another resident said: 'It was all along the road. It was nice. There was nothing wrong with it. 'It went all along to the Britannia Hotel.' He added it was 'good to see' because 'so much today is about division and I am just proud of being English'. The Britannia Hotel in Canary Wharf has been at the centre of protests over asylum seekers in recent weeks. Tower Hamlets Council said it has a 'policy setting out which flags are flown from council buildings and on which occasions'. In a statement, the council added: 'We are aware members of the public have been putting up St George flags on various structures. 'While we recognise people wish to express their views, we have a responsibility to monitor and maintain council infrastructure. 'Where flags are attached to council-owned infrastructure without permission, they may be removed as part of routine maintenance.' Birmingham City Council has been contacted for comment.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Clean and harmonised CRM data vital for AI model training
As healthcare entities move towards the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) models to streamline patient engagement, being acquitted of good customer relationship management (CRM) system data is of rising importance, an expert has said. In April 2025, the UK National Health Service (NHS) released guidance on the importance of using high-quality data in training AI models. The guidance highlighted that poor quality data can lead to unintended biases and other inaccuracies that may stymy the effectiveness of AI models used for varying functions in healthcare systems. CRM data includes information on patient demographics, individuals' medical history, insurance information, billing details, and more. The consolidation of this data is intended to improve patient engagement, personalise care, and track individuals' medical history. A 2022 report indicated that revenue streams from 44% of healthcare respondents were directly affected bypoor quality CRM data. In addition, 69% of respondents said their organisations did not pursue or complete potentially valuable initiatives due to low-quality CRM data. According to Rachel Mak-McCully, senior data scientist at digital twin developer the cleaning and harmonisation of CRM datasets is not an area that is given enough consideration – despite its significant influence on AI models being deployed in healthcare. 'In thinking about clean data, there's a few issues, including how accurate and comprehensive the data is,' Mak-McCully told Medical Device Network. 'In the US, we have a very fractured medical system, so the information that you get about someone may be quite fractured.' Fractured data can relate to data that is missing because it hasn't been collected at the same time or stored together, Mak-McCully said, or in the sense that it's been measured in different ways. 'Imagine the data cleaning process as a spreadsheet. You might have a lot of different columns that are named differently, but they're the same thing. You want to make sure that all of those are harmonised into the same column,' Mak-McCully said. 'And you want to make sure that the units that you're measuring across a range of different data sources are the same. The ultimate goal is to have a clean, tabular dataset at the end that incorporates all relevant sources of data, so that a single, clean source of data can be used to train your AI model.' Mak-McCully concludes that while there is a lot of talk about the performance of AI models in healthcare and other areas, such as the new benchmarks that have been made, very few people talk about the underlying data. 'For us to clearly communicate what it is that we're doing, the implications of that and for people to understand how data is used, particularly in healthcare, is a really important conversation.' "Clean and harmonised CRM data vital for AI model training" was originally created and published by Medical Device Network, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data