One of our members received the email below from his MP:
Thank you for contacting me about assisted dying.
Please accept my sincere apologies for not having replied sooner.
I have spent a great deal of time reading around the subject, and reading the hundreds of emails from constituents such as yourself.
Understandably constituents have expressed a wide range of views from those who are strongly for, those who are against, and those who ask only that I vote with clear eyes and a strong heart.
I have also listened to the life stories of countless constituents, whose experiences and traumas are heart-breaking and also at times uplifting. I heard from relatives, friends and those who are themselves terminally ill or living with a condition that will eventually leave them wholly dependent on medical care and treatment.
Some wish to alleviate their suffering of that of their loved ones, or to prevent it happening to anyone else, while others fear they will be pressured to die, or lose loved ones prematurely to a state-run programme.
I organised a public meeting for local residents on the subject at Yewdale Community Centre in Carlisle. This was an opportunity for people to share their individual experiences and how these experiences can form strong convictions, both for and against assisted dying. And I remain very grateful to all those who shared their personal stories.
I also bring my own personal experience of loved ones who have survived a suicide attempt and of those who died by suicide to this issue. And my experience of living with and losing those closest to me to slow, painful, degenerative conditions. This was never going to be an easy decision. I am instinctively pro-choice. But I have concluded for five key reasons that I cannot support the Bill. These are:
1. The reservations expressed by many disabled people and disability organisations.
2. To vote in favour is in effect to vote to fund one - and only one - form of death. Everyone should have the right to a good death. This Bill only deals with one.
3. There is nothing definitive about a terminal prognosis, yet the Bill will require it.
4. I am also of the view that no matter how tightly drafted, there can never be a watertight safeguard against coercion.
5. Whilst I recognise that evidence of coercion will be dealt with by law, I do not believe you can safeguard against people feeling they are a burden. And given the provision of social care, mental health services and palliative care, are far from adequate, I think the risk of an individual choosing assisted dying to relieve a ‘burden’ is too high.
I hope you recognise that it has not been an easy decision, but it is one I have arrived at after many hours and days of deliberation.
Yours sincerely,
Julie Minns MP
Member of Parliament for Carlisle and North Cumbria
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