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The numbers travelling from the UK to end their lives at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland dropped to 23 last year and 18 in 2020, from a previous average of 37 per year. Sarah Wootton, chief executive of campaigning organisation Dignity In Dying, said: “The pandemic has had a devastating impact on terminally ill Britons, limiting even further their ability to have choice and control over the end of their lives.

“Lockdowns, travel bans and ever-changing Swiss and British restrictions have made it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to secure a peaceful, dignified assisted death in Switzerland.”

Although Britons can go abroad, Dignity In Dying estimates that the cost of a trip to Dignitas is more than £10,000.

As patients have to be well enough to travel, it is feared some end their lives sooner than they otherwise would have.

Ms Wootton added: “Almost 500 Britons have now been assisted to die at Dignitas alone in the past 20 years.

“But most of us won’t have the £10,000 required and Covid has proven that we cannot rely on another country’s compassion to solve our problems with dying.

“We urgently need our Parliament to give time for a serious debate on changing the law and to give terminally ill people the right to choose, which is now available to more than 200 million around the world.”

The only part of me that is not affected is my brain.

The Daily Express’s Give Us Our Last Rights crusade is calling for assisted dying to be available in the UK to people who are terminally ill and suffering at the end of their life.

Campaigner David Minns, 74, of Suffolk, shared his story with MPs on the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Choice at the End of Life.

Joining an online meeting from hospital yesterday, David told of his daughter Katie’s “horrific” death from cancer last year.

He is now terminally ill with a rare condition called amyloidosis – a consequence of his blood cancer – that is damaging his vital organs.

David said: “Katie in the end had a very horrific death, so much so that there were times that I sat with her when I contemplated putting a pillow over her face.

“I thought, what sort of society do we live in that allows our terminally ill people to suffer in this way, that puts me into a situation where I contemplate killing my own daughter and all that would entail?”

David told MPs he did not want to take his own life but wants the option of a medically assisted death. He said: “I am deteriorating almost on a daily basis.

“The only part of me that is not affected is my brain. I’ve got neuropathy, I’ve got postural hypotension, I have no tastebuds.

“The options are that I take my own life, which I won’t, or the disease is going to slowly clog up my organs and one by one they will shut down. My best case scenario is that my heart goes first and I die from a heart attack.

“Assisted dying is never going to be there for me because I’m not going to live long enough for this law, if a law ever comes into passing.”

The MPs also heard from psychiatrist Sir Simon Wessely, a former president of both the Royal College of Psychiatrists and Royal Society of Medicine, who spoke in a personal capacity.

He said his views had changed after close friend Sir Paul Cosford, a former Public Health England medical director, died of terminal lung cancer.

Sir Simon said: “It was three years before he did die and I know that he didn’t die in the way that he and his wife would have wished.”

Tory MP Andrew Mitchell, the APPG’s co-chair, said: “I would say we have gained more converts from MPs hearing the sort of stories that we heard from David, that leads to them deciding that this change in the law should take place.”

Dame Jenni joins call for assisted dying vote

Dame Jenni Murray has voiced her support for a referendum on legalising assisted dying.

The former Woman’s Hour presenter, 71, says she will not forget the harrowing experience of her own parents dying alone and in pain 16 years ago.

She told Good Morning Britain: “My mother had Parkinson’s disease and had a year in a care home as my father couldn’t help her physically anymore. I would go over every weekend and every time she would beg me – she called me Jen, not Jenni – ‘Jen, would you please help me die’.

“And there was nothing I could do about it…She was in a lot of pain. Eventually she died alone.”

Dame Jenni said her father had later attempted to end his own life by stopping eating and drinking.

She convinced him to go to hospital, where he was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer and ultimately died in her arms.

She said: “He had definitely wanted to die, he knew he was terminally ill and he had been in a lot of pain.”

For an investigative ITV Tonight piece shown last night, Dame Jenni met campaigner Win Crew, whose husband died at a clinic in Switzerland nearly 20 years ago.

The broadcaster added: “Win said ‘So many people are in favour of this, and my husband wanted this, and I think we should have a referendum’.And I sort of agree.”

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