Ask your MP to vote NO to assisted suicide

The Bill was only published at 10pm on Monday 11 November, giving MPs barely two weeks to scrutinise this significant and complex change to legislation before it goes to a vote on 29 November.

It is deeply concerning that MPs and the wider public are only seeing this Bill barely two and a half weeks before it goes to a vote. What is being proposed is a monumental change to our laws, and it’s totally unjustifiable and fundamentally undemocratic to try and rush it through without proper public scrutiny.

When MPs last voted on the issue, MPs and the public were given almost two months to scrutinise the Bill before it was voted on. Similarly, earlier this year Lord Falconer introduced an assisted suicide Bill in the House of Lords and gave almost four months for scrutiny of the Bill before Second Reading was scheduled to take place.

More than half of the current sitting MPs were newly elected at the General Election this year, and have spent much of that time since the election on recess. This means they have had very little time to hear from both sides of the debate on this significant change to the law – and now they are only being given barely two and a half weeks to scrutinise the Bill.

The introduction of the Bill comes at a time when many elderly people are heading into winter with their Winter Fuel Payment cut by the Government. Palliative care services are in crisis with over 100,000 people dying each year without receiving the palliative care they desperately need. Our wider healthcare system is in a state of crisis, with Labour’s own Health Secretary describing the NHS as “broken”.

Within this context, this proposed assisted suicide law is a disaster waiting to happen.

Although Keir Starmer is strongly backing the Bill, many in his cabinet are opposing it including the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, who has serious concerns about legalising assisted suicide and has confirmed that he will be voting against the Bill.

We only have to look overseas to countries that have legalised assisted suicide and/or euthanasia to see that in practice these laws have been a disaster.

The horror stories that are coming out of Canada are likely the ones that you are most familiar with. These include:

• army veterans with PTSD being offered ‘Medical Assistance In Dying’ (MAID) 
• patients citing poverty or housing uncertainty as their main reason for seeking to end their lives through ‘MAID’
• numbers spiralling out of control: in 2016 when ‘MAID’ was introduced, there were just over 1,000 cases but by 2022 this escalated to 13,241 deaths, accounting for 4.1% of all deaths in Canada.
• Canada is now on the verge of introducing euthanasia and assisted suicide for people with mental health conditions, with this change in the law coming into effect in 2027.

There is also truly shocking evidence coming out of other countries and jurisdictions that have introduced assisted suicide and/or euthanasia.

In Oregon, a state frequently held up by UK campaigners as a model for introducing assisted suicide here, eligibility criteria in the law has expanded via the interpretation of ‘terminal illness’ so that assisted deaths have been granted for anorexia, diabetes, hernias and arthritis. 

Closer to home, in the Netherlands and Belgium, euthanasia laws and/or practice have been extended to allow euthanasia for children and newborn babies. 

It’s now crucial that all MPs and the Government urgently see that there is a large number of voters in each constituency who don’t want this dangerous and extreme change to our laws – changes that would put the vulnerable at risk and see the ending of many lives through assisted suicide. 

You can make a difference right now by contacting your MP to ask them to stop assisted suicide from being rushed into law. It only takes 30 seconds using our easy-to-use tool.

Please enter your postcode in the box above to write to your MP now.