Daily Express

Downton’s Jim: Time to act to help terminally ill

- By Hanna Geissler Health Reporter

DOWNTON Abbey actor Jim Carter has called on the Government to honour its pledge to the Daily Express and review benefits for the terminally ill.

Jim – who played butler Mr Carson in the ITV show – is an ambassador for Marie Curie, which is backing this newspaper’s Compassion for the Dying crusade.

Along with the Motor Neurone Disease Associatio­n, it is calling for an end to rules which mean patients can only get fasttracke­d access to benefits if a doctor or nurse says they have less than six months to live.

Writing in the Daily Express one year ago the then Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd announced a “fresh and honest” evaluation of the system.

But 12 months later, it has been completed.

Charities claim more than 3,000 people have died awaiting a decision on benefits not applicatio­ns since that promised review. Actor Jim said: “That the end is in sight – we hope – is in no small part thanks to the on-going campaignin­g by The Express and its readers.

“The Government has committed to review the system but a year on we are still waiting.

“It is impossible not to think of the people who have struggled in this time. Those who have campaigned alongside us but won’t live to see the changes they fought for.”

Last month, Minister for Disabled People Justin Tomlinson told MPs that progress would be announced soon.

He said: “The Secretary of State and I are passionate about making changes: it will not be the status quo.

“Covid-19 caused a delay to the final part of the consultati­on with the medical profession­als, but we will bring forward a change shortly.”

MP JUSTIN Tomlinson’s recent comments in Parliament gave me hope that the end may be in sight for the people who have had to endure such hardship at the hands of the benefits system while coming to terms with the fact they are dying and that time with their loved ones is running out.

That the end is in sight – we hope – is in no small part thanks to the ongoing campaignin­g by the Daily Express and its readers.

Many of them have emailed their MPs, tweeted ministers and signed petitions to correct a peculiarit­y of law that a parliament­ary review has already judged to be cruel.

I lent my support to this campaign to stand up for those who, through illness – terminal illness, no less – don’t have the time and voice to campaign for years for change.

Last summer I joined Mark Hughes and Dave Setters, with terminal cancer and motor neurone disease respective­ly, to hand in a 55,000-strong petition demanding change to 10 Downing Street, pictured.

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