Such a profound social change needs consensus and leadership. Those tasked with seeing this through are offering neither

There is something about the sound of Prof Sir Chris Whitty’s voice that inexorably takes me back. Whenever he speaks it’s hard not to think about R numbers and social distancing, masks and variants. His was the judgment we learned to trust in the days when the only certainty was that thousands were going to die; his the not-quite-inscrutable face we studied for clues that some politician had just said something stupid. For those reasons and more, I would very much like to know what the chief medical officer thinks about assisted dying for terminally ill people. But when he came before the committee scrutinising this most sensitive of issues on Wednesday, he wouldn’t say.

Whitty answered all questions posed about the proposed new law, including how accurately doctors can predict that someone has only six months left. (Not entirely, though he explained that they’re better at predicting that death will come in the foreseeable future – which seems more important here than whether it’s five, six or seven months exactly, though Whitty didn’t say the last part.) He wasn’t asked how well doctors can predict what that death might be like: how much pain or indignity it’s likely to involve, which might be equally hard to say but is what I’d want to know. (Some apply for assisted death without ever using the option, just to know it is there if needed.)

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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