A FORMER mayor of Brighton dying from pancreatic cancer is calling for the terminally ill to have more control over how to end their lives. Gill Sweeting, 72, has been given six months to live and is supporting a bill to legalise assisted dying for adults with terminal illnesses, saying it could lessen suffering and give people more dignity.

The former Labour councillor, who was mayor in 1992, said: “The prognosis that I was given was up to six months, of which I have had two and a bit.

“It is far more sensible to do it in a controlled way than to do it yourself basically which can go wrong and is likely to be very messy – you know if you throw yourself under a train or something it mucks up a lot of people’s lives.”

She added: “You know I have always thought that by the time that I needed assisted dying it would be legal, but it ‘aint.”

The assisted dying bill proposed by Lord Falconer would allow terminally ill over-18s, who are mentally competent and have less than six months to live, to request and lawfully be provided with medication to end their lives.

The bill was debated in the House of Lords in January and Lord Falconer has said he will try and get it through again after the election.

Campaign group Dignity in Dying says in a poll of 5,000 people, 82 % of respondents wanted to see assisted dying made legal, while only 12% would oppose a change. Opponents of assisted dying say they are concerned saying it would be open to abuse and places too much of a burden upon doctors, among other factors. Speaking in a campaign video for Dignity in Dying, Mrs Sweeting said it seemed a “shame” that politicians did not recognise the arguments in favour “or they have not got the courage to speak out about it if they do”. She supported assisted dying long before her own illness – attending a demonstration in support of Lord Falconer’s bill a month before her diagnosis and speaking out on the topic nearly two decades ago.

In December 1995 The Argus reported how she said hospice patients should be “put down” due to their inhumane levels of pain.

She said: “I firmly believe that if someone is dying and so near to death, and with the level of pain that requires the pain management that a hospice provides, he or she should be put down.”

She stood by the comments at the time despite controversy, revealing she had survived cancer 25 years previously and hoped people would be able to “talk rationally about death”.

In the moving campaign video, her husband of 49 years, Paul, is seen composing a letter to a friend to let her know about his wife’s illness.

He said: “It is difficult to know to whom and how many people you need to tell.”