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.

The real question here is whether we should change the law for a very small number of people who, despite adequate provision of good palliative care, are still strongly determined to end their lives. I am convinced that to do so would place a much larger of vulnerable people under pressure to request early death.

In 1994 the last House of Lords' Select Committee to report on euthanasia unanimously recommended no change in the law. Its Chairman, neurologist Lord Walton of Detchant, later described in Parliament their concerns about such legislation: 'We concluded that it was virtually impossible to ensure that all acts of euthanasia were truly voluntary and that any liberalisation of the law in the United Kingdom could not be abused. We were also concerned that vulnerable people - the elderly, lonely, sick or distressed - would feel pressure, whether real or imagined, to request early death.'

Hard cases make bad laws, and no law allowing assisted dying could ever be controlled.

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

Your sincerely