This letter and others on these pages give examples of good points to raise in writing to MPs or Peers about the Joffe Bill. Put the ideas in your own words and add a personal angle based on your own experience of the issues.

Dear...

I am writing to express my concern about the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill, which aims to legalise assisted suicide and receives its second reading in the House of Lords on 12 May.

Requests for assisted suicide are extremely rare when patients' physical, psychosocial and spiritual needs are properly met. Rather than pushing for assisted dying, our key priority should therefore be to build on the excellent tradition of palliative care that we have in this country and make best quality palliative care more readily accessible.

Palliative Care is still being delivered in a postcode lottery, financed mainly by the charitable sector, and with 56% dying in hospital where palliative care is most poorly resourced, rather than at home, where most would prefer to die, given the choice. Furthermore, while 95 per cent of patients using hospice or palliative care have cancer, 300,000 people with other terminal diseases who might benefit from this care are excluded because of their conditions. This is an intolerable situation. By 2020, the over 50s will comprise half the adult population – it is essential we rethink current service provision and end-of-life care to ensure it can meet the demands an ageing population will make in the next 20 years.

I urge you to oppose this bill and rather to push for better services for the terminally ill.

Yours sincerely