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Caroline Lucas (Image: Getty)
By Caroline Lucas Green Party MP
We need to start doing death and dying better in the UK.
As a nation, we need to break the taboos and bring conversations and choices out of the darkness and into the light of day.
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We also need to get a lot more funding going into palliative care so we’re looking after people properly at the end of their lives.
But in addition to both those things, I firmly believe that we also need to change the law to bring Assisted Dying to Britain.
Not only because the evidence suggests this can in itself be a powerful catalyst to improve palliative care.
But because even the best palliative care in the world has its limits.
My inbox is full of heartbreaking emails from people who have lost loved ones and are angry about how badly we continue to let dying people down with the law as it stands.
And from people who are very frightened that they will similarly be let down at the end of their lives. ？
It doesn’t matter how much people suffer or how certain the terminal nature of their illness, nobody in the UK currently has the option for a safe, compassionate and medically-assisted death on their own terms.
We leave dying people to take matters into their own hands, with hundreds of UK residents with a terminal illness estimated to take their own lives every year.
We leave them to go to Switzerland, away from home, to die alone, for fear that anyone accompanying them might be prosecuted on return.
And we leave others – whether because they can’t afford to go or aren't able to– to face unbearable suffering at the very end.
Three-quarters of the British public now support a law to bring in assisted dying for people living with terminal illness.
And it is thanks to that overwhelming popular support – led by Dame Esther Rantzen and this paper – that MPs will today have the chance for an open debate on the matter.
I, for one, will be backing legislative change at the earliest opportunity.
Clearly any new law would need to include strict criteria and safeguards to prevent abuse or coercion.
But we can’t keep running away from this issue, leaving dying people and their loved ones to fend for themselves.
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We need more than just a debate. Now is the time to put the matter to an actual vote.
We have a chance to make Britain a better place to die. It’s time Parliament took it.
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