The feeling, said Sarah Burns of her sister’s last days, is one of overwhelming guilt. But we couldn’t do anything.” When time eventually ran out for Elise Burns, a 52-year-old woman who worked in publishing, the circumstances were “absolutely her worst nightmare”. Initially treated for breast cancer and subsequently diagnosed with terminal secondary cancer, which had spread to her liver, lungs and bones, Elise had campaigned passionately for the assisted dying bill, daring the peers who ensured it ran out of time to “look me in the eye”.
As part of the Dignity in Dying campaign, she was one of eight terminally ill people who appealed directly to MPs in powerful videos, filmed by the world renowned British photographer and director Rankin. She died on 22 July – the second of the eight terminally ill people who featured in the Rankin videos, which were filmed in May, to go. The first, Keith Williams, a 77-year-old former welder who became a social worker, died of lung cancer on 16 June, having also been denied, according to his son, his desperate wish to “go out on my own terms”.
The controversial bill, reintroduced by Lauren Edwards, the Labour MP for Rochester and Strood, returns to the Commons for a second reading on 11 September. Andy Burnham has already said he will not vote to avoid influencing the emotional debate. Burns will be at the Commons, carrying the baton for her sister, who was from Faversham, and was one of the last people Edwards heard from before reviving Kim Leadbeater’s private member’s bill, bringing it back to parliament after it foundered under the weight of hundreds of amendments by peers in the Lords.
And literally every day was painful,” said her sister. In the end, the speed of events deprived her of that choice. At the beginning of July, just two months after shooting her Rankin video, she developed an infection and was hospitalised.
Sixteen days later, she was moved to a hospice, dying two days later. They all knew her wishes.” The family were left feeling utterly helpless. More than 100 cross-party peers have written to MPs urging them to send the bill back to the House of Lords so that it can complete its passage through parliament.
The signatories, including the former cabinet secretary Gus O’Donnell, the former Labour leader Neil Kinnock and the former Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson, said the upper house’s failure to pass the legislation in the previous session had let terminally ill people and their families down and blocked a measure which had public support. They accused a minority of peers who had opposed the backbench bill of filibustering after hundreds of amendments tabled by just seven opponents meant it ran out of time. They wrote: “As even opponents of the principle of assisted dying in the Lords have acknowledged, the elected chamber has every right to ask us to do this.
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