Dame Esther told MPs every single vote is crucial on Friday (Image: PA)
Dear Members of Parliament,
I am not surprised that so many of you are hoping to speak at the debate this morning. It will be a rare opportunity to make a life and death decision, when you could be making a real difference, giving hope not only to your constituents but to future generations.
You will be asked to vote to decide whether patients in the last six months of life should have the choice, if life becomes unbearable, to ask for assistance to end it. Or should they be denied the right to choose?
Even if you are not called upon to speak, every single vote is crucial, so please attend this debate, listen to the evidence and reflect upon your own experience and what your constituents have told you.
It’s all about choice, isn’t it. Giving the patient the right to choose, not to shorten their lives but to shorten their deaths. Because even the best palliative care cannot always ease the most distressing symptoms, so sometimes an agonising death can last for hours, even days.
I am sure you will have received heartbreaking messages, as I have, from courageous families describing the acute pain suffered by their loved ones, the loss of dignity, such unbearable discomfort and distress that they begged for help to die.
Help which under the current criminal law had to be refused. Others told me about tragic suicides of those they loved.
The only happy memories described to me were of those lucky enough to be able to travel to Dignitas in Switzerland, to choose an assisted death, pain free, dying in dignity, but alone.
Because if their loving families had been with them to support them, they would then have been investigated by the police for assisting suicide, a crime punishable by up to 14 years in jail. As legislators, is that really the way you want our legal system to work?
If you decide to vote to change our current cruel messy criminal law, in future the choice of a good, merciful death will not be restricted to those who can afford to fly to Switzerland.
Terminally ill people will be able to look forward with confidence to a good death, in their own homes, surrounded by those they love.
I understand that there are members of parliament who disagree with this Bill. That is why this is a free vote and you have the choice.
But Kim Leadbeater MP who has listened, studied and researched the evidence in order to create the Bill says that far too often the only choice now open to terminally ill patients is between suffering, suicide or Switzerland.
Please make it possible for your constituents to choose another option if their life becomes unbearable, the good death we all hope for, the dignity of choice over their own lives, and the happy memory we would all wish to leave behind for those we love.