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Back Lord Forsyth’s amendment today

Lord Forsyth will soon table an amendment to the Health and Care Bill backing our efforts to change the law on assisted dying. The amendment could be debated and voted on as soon as the end of February. It’s vital you write to Peers today to ensure they know about your support.

Unlike MPs, Peers don’t have staff to manage their email - so a simple, heartfelt letter sent in the post is the most effective way to convince them to support this amendment.

Opponents are mobilising supporters to send identical campaigning emails to Peers. We need to do one better and grab their attention with personal, heartfelt letters they cannot ignore. It’s quick and easy to write your letter using our template - simply fill in your details to get started.

PLEASE NOTE: Once you’ve filled in the template you will be able to preview what you’ve written. You will then be allocated three Peers at random when you download the letters.

You will need to print your letters, so please make sure your device is connected to a printer. Or you could save them as a PDF and print them later. If you’re using a mobile phone it may be easier to complete this on a computer.

Prefer to handwrite your letter? Great! We’ll assign you a Peer to write to. Simply enter your details and follow the steps all the way to 'print' to get their name and address (as well as prompts to help you write your letter).

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Letter

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WRITE YOUR LETTER TO THE HOUSE OF LORDS

Start by adding your details.

Are you sure?
If you choose 'No', we can’t tell you the next time we make a breakthrough in the campaign for assisted dying. If you choose 'Yes', you can unsubscribe any time.

Write a quick, heartfelt letter to a Peer

Simply fill in the boxes with your response to the questions, and then click ‘preview my letter’ to check you’re happy with it.

Our questions won’t appear in your letter, only what you write in the boxes. Your name and address and a Peer’s name and address will automatically be included when you finish.

Please note: This page will expire after 1 hour. If you will take longer to write your letter, you may wish to write it in a word document and then copy your response across into this template. Dignity in Dying will not have a back-up copy of your letter.

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Letter

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Peers are more likely to read letters that are completely personalised, but if you're stuck you can use our example:

I’m writing to ask you to support Lord Forsyth’s amendment to the Health and Care Bill to ensure future assisted dying legislation has time to be fully debated and scrutinised.

This could include:

  • The Government is neutral on assisted dying. But not allowing a debate to progress is not a neutral position, it is siding with the status quo. To be truly neutral, the Government must facilitate a proper debate with adequate time in Parliament for all voices to be heard.

If you have a personal story to share here, that would be really powerful. If you don’t have a personal story you can include a couple of the following points:

  • The choice dying people face isn’t between living and dying – it’s between dying on their own terms or the possibility of dying in a way they do not want.
  • An assisted dying law wouldn’t mean more deaths, but fewer people suffering.
  • Countries like the USA, Australia and New Zealand have proven assisted dying laws are safe, fair and compassionate. Britain is being left behind.
  • For every year that this debate continues to stall due to lack of Parliamentary time, our unfair laws compel dozens of dying people to travel to Switzerland, hundreds to end their lives at home and thousands to suffer against their wishes.
  • It cannot be right that other countries are able to debate assisted dying legislation and provide choice to their citizens, but that in Westminster the campaign for change is held up due to Government inaction.

E.g. Please attend the Report Stage of the Health and Care Bill and support Lord Forsyth’s amendment.