Respond to the parliamentary consultation today

The Health and Social Care Select Committee has announced that it will be undertaking an inquiry into assisted dying. The Committee is a cross-party group of MPs who scrutinise health and social care policy. As part of this inquiry, it has opened a public consultation to take into account public opinion on this issue.

The consultation is now closed. The Committee will analyse the information it has received alongside written and oral evidence.

We know that public support for assisted dying is extremely high, consistently over 80%. But this consultation will give MPs further information about what the public believes will make an assisted dying law safe, fair, and compassionate.

Opponents will turn out in force to flood this survey with their anti-choice ideology. We have to make sure that the results reflect the overwhelming majority across the UK who support assisted dying, not a scaremongering minority.

Using the guidance below, please, take 5 minutes to respond to the consultation demonstrating your support today.

About the consultation

The consultation survey asks six questions about how you feel about the current law and the possibility of law change.

Question 1

This is the most important question as it could be used as a headline for and against statistic. The question asks whether you support the current law that outlaws assisted dying in any form.

In order to be clear you believe a change in the law is necessary, please select the second option – I broadly disagree with the law on this issue in England and Wales.

Question 2

This is a text box that gives you 300 words to explain why you believe law change is necessary. In this box you can include:

• Any experience you have of the impact of the current law.
• That you support the legalisation of assisted dying for terminally ill, mentally competent adults in their final months of life.
• Evidence shows that the current law is dangerous
• Examples of the law causing suffering and trauma to dying people and their families, forcing them to make impossible decisions with no protection. When suffering goes beyond the reach of palliative care, dying people want and need the choice of an assisted death.
• The current options – traveling abroad to die, refusing food and water to starve to death, secret suicides behind closed doors – aren’t acceptable in a compassionate country. Assisted dying has a proven track record in other countries that show it is safe, fair, and compassionate. It is legal in other compassionate, democratic countries like Australia and New Zealand.

Question 3

This question is about identifying what matters to people when considering this debate. You can select up to three, including the points below:

• Personal autonomy
• Personal dignity
• Reducing suffering
• If you have another consideration you would like to add, you can select “Other” instead and expand on your answer in Question 4

Question 4

This question allows you to add more detail if you selected “Other” above

Question 5

This question asks what next steps would be helpful on the way to law change. We recommend you select any or all of the options given.

Though Dignity in Dying doesn’t consider a referendum the best way forwards on this issue, it has led to law change in other jurisdictions. Similarly, a citizens’ assembly would be another way of demonstrating the huge public support for assisted dying.

Question 6

In “Other”, it would be useful to mention that:

• Proposals for new Assisted Dying Bills are unlikely to succeed unless they are allocated parliamentary time to complete all its stages in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Therefore a necessary next step for this debate would be a commitment from the major parties to allow future proposed legislation the parliamentary time to complete every stage.
• The views of dying people and their families must be central to this debate. Real-world experience of the current law should play a core role in the development of this inquiry and any future independent research.
  

  The consolation is now closed.