How to write to peers to stop assisted suicide

In September 2025, Kim Leadbeater’s bill to legalise assisted suicide will come back to Parliament, where it would have to pass through the House of Lords to become a law.

The House of Lords can block this bill. It isn’t a government bill and it wasn’t a manifesto promise, which means that the House of Lords members are within their rights to reject the bill outright.

There is still an opportunity to save lives by stopping this deadly bill.

Please write to a member of the House of Lords, asking them to oppose the Terminally Ill (Adults) End of Life Bill.

Members of the House of Lords (peers) do not represent any particular constituency, so you can write to as many as you like.

Below, you can find out how to choose a peer to write to. Further down the page, you can also see suggestions for some of the main points you may like to make.

Please use these to send a personal, gracious letter or email to a peer, asking them to oppose assisted suicide.

How to write to a peer

• Below these instructions is a list of names. Please click on the text that is closest alphabetically to your surname.
• You will then see a list of peers. Choose one or more of these members to write to.
• Click on their profile.
• On the left side of the page, click on the ‘contact information’ tab.
• You will see contact details for the peer you have chosen:
  • If the only email address supplied is contactholmember@parliament.uk, please write them a physical letter.
  • If the page shows a different email address, you can choose whether to write them by email or by physical letter. 
• Physical letters, particularly if carefully thought through and handwritten, can be highly effective.
• You can find information on how to properly address members of the House of Lords here.

Choose the surname closest alphabetically to your own to get started:

Adams | Arbuthnot | Bassam | Biggar | Botham | Brookeborough | Callanan | Cashman | Clement-Jones | Curran | Dobbs | Elliott | Fellowes | Freeman | Gohir | Grender | Hannan | Hayman | Hoey | Hunt | Jones | King | Lebedev | Lisvane | Mallalieu | McDonald | Monckton | Murray | Oates | Parminter | Ponsonby | Ravensdale | Roborough | Scott | Shinkwin | Spencer | Strasburger | Thomas | Turner | Walney | Wilcox | Wyld

Points to make in your letter

You do not need to make all, or even several of these points in your letter or email. Instead, please find points that appeal to you, or that you can add to from your own personal experience.

In principle arguments against legalising assisted suicide

1. It implies certain lives are not worth living

• Passing the assisted suicide bill will send the subtle message that certain lives are not worth living. The bill does not stop doctors from raising assisted suicide with patients, and patients who are vulnerable and do not have the support of a loving family may feel pressured into ending their lives.
• In Oregon, 43% of those who requested assisted suicide cited feeling like a burden as reason for doing so. Further, Lord Walton of Detchant – when giving an overview of his report on euthanasia in 1994 – concluded that “it is would be 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.”
• Many terminally ill patients are also disabled, and as Liz Carr testified in her BBC documentary Better Off Dead, many disabled people have been told that they are “better off dead”. Many disabled people may feel pressured to end their lives if this bill is passed.
• In Canada, Paralympian and armed forces veteran Christine Gauthier requested that a wheelchair ramp be installed on her house. Instead, she was recommended assisted suicide. Other veterans who have sought assistance for managing their PTSD have also been offered assisted suicide unprompted.

2. It undermines the doctor-patient relationship

• During the committee stage of the bill, Dame Sarah Cox – the President of the Association of Palliative Medicine – testified that 43% of its members would leave their organisation if assisted suicide were legalised.
• This is not surprising – doctors swear to uphold the Hippocratic Oath, which requires doctors to preserve life and not do anything to procure the death of their patients. They go into the profession to preserve life, and this bill will encourage doctors to help take life.
• Patients will no longer be able to trust that their doctors have their best interests at heart, since there is no guarantee that their doctor may not propose death to them.

3. The slippery slope is real

• The bill currently applies to only terminally ill patients with less than six months left to live, but it is highly unlikely that it will remain that way. In Canada for instance, the law has gone from requiring that the patient’s death is “reasonably foreseeable” to recent proposals to allow those with mental illnesses to qualify for assisted suicide.
• Similar expansions have come into effect in Netherlands, Switzerland and Belgium, where children are eligible.
• Once access to assisted suicide becomes a ‘right’, those who do not qualify will complain that they are being discriminated against. Equality and human rights laws will be leveraged to extend eligibility to those who have more than 6 months left to live, or to people with mental illness and disabilities.

4. Autonomy is not sacrosanct

• Proponents of the bill cite autonomy as a valid justification for legalising assisted suicide. However, wanting to uphold the autonomy of a select few to end their lives is not a justification for changing the law. We wouldn’t allow people to commit murder or to rape because we wanted to respect autonomy.
• Considering the state of palliative care in this country, how can it be said that terminally ill patients are making a truly autonomous choice to end their lives?

5. Number of suicides increase

• In Australia, it was found that that number of unassisted suicides in Victoria increased by over 30%. In fact, since the law came into force, suicide among older people in Victoria has increased by more than 50%.
• Legalising assisted suicide clearly does not reduce unassisted suicides; it just increases the overall number of deaths by suicide.

6. Unreliability of terminal diagnoses

• Many patients outlive their terminal prognoses. A 2023 study found that only 32% of prognoses for individuals with just weeks or months to live were accurate. It is therefore impossible to establish with precision when someone can therefore be considered as ‘already dying’.
• This has serious practical implications beyond just being a theoretical consideration: if assisted suicide were legalised, many vulnerable people often distressed by the thought of a terminal diagnosis may rush to request help to end their lives.

Points specific to Kim Leadbeater’s bill

1. Lack of safeguards

• The High Court judge was removed and replaced with an Assisted Dying Panel comprising a psychiatrist, a social worker, and a senior lawyer. Members of such a panel are likely to be ideologically supportive of assisted suicide, since those against the practice would not choose to take part in it.
• It cannot compel or question witnesses, is not required to hear from anyone besides the patient and their doctor.
• An approval of an assisted suicide application cannot be appealed, but an applicant whose application has been rejected can appeal the decision.
• There is no requirement to inform families of a request for assisted suicide, or even when the request has been approved and the death has occurred.

2. Does not exclude mental illness and disability

• Patients who have a mental illness or disability alongside their terminal condition are still included.
• Patients whose terminal illness arises from the physical manifestations of a mental illness, such as anorexia patients, are not excluded from the Bill.
• An amendment to ensure that a person could not be considered terminally ill by reason of having a mental illness or disability and an amendment to restrict a person from bringing themselves within the definition of “terminally ill” by stopping eating or drinking were both rejected.

3. Coercion in all its forms is not excluded

• Amendments were tabled – and rejected – by the bill committee to ensure that the patient had not been encouraged, unduly influenced, or manipulated into requesting assisted suicide.
• Those who feel like a burden will not be excluded from the bill. The bill committee rejected an amendment intended to prevent a person from requesting assisted suicide in order to benefit others.

4. Does not protect conscientious objection

• Amendments tabled to allow hospices and care homes to exempt themselves from assisted suicide provision were rejected both during the committee and report stages.
• An amendment tabled by Rebecca Paul MP during report stage granting employers the right to ban employees from participating in assisted suicide was rejected. This will infringe on the right of Christian hospices to object to assisted suicides being performed on their premises.

5. Undermines investment in Palliative care

• The bill will undermine investment in palliative care. Doctors cannot insist that a patient requesting assisted suicide meets with a palliative care specialist – an amendment to that effect was rejected by the bill committee.
• During oral evidence of the committee stage, Dr Sarah Cox cited evidence showing that palliative care improves three times more in countries that have not legalised assisted suicide. She therefore concluded that legalised assisted suicide was “impeding the development of palliative care services.

Thank you for taking action to protect vulnerable people’s lives.

Please send as many letters as you are able to and share this page with others, encouraging them to do so too.

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