Unlike MPs, Members of the House of Lords do not have constituents, meaning there is not a Peer whose job it is to represent you based on the area of the country in which you live.

For this reason you should take some time to think about which Peer you will write to and why, such as whether you have a personal or professional connection with them, or you have professional expertise in medicine or healthcare. If you know a former MP for your constituency has been elevated to the House of Lords they may be interested in hearing from you.

Write a letter

Many Peers do not have publicly available email addresses, so it is generally better to write letters to them. You can search through the Parliament website to find a Peer you may wish to write to using this page on the parliament.uk website. This page also provides an option to search for Peers with a specific policy interest, such as Health Services and Medicine, or Crime, Civil Law, Justice and Rights.

You may find guidance on how to how to formally address Members of the House using this page on the parliament.uk website.

All Peers can be written to at:

House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW

What to include in your letter

The following points can be emphasised in your letter to a Peer:

The Bill fails to protect healthcare and end-of-life care institutions, such as hospitals, hospices and care homes from being required to facilitate assisted suicide. There are a number of Catholic and other faith-based hospices and care homes around England and Wales, many of which are run by religious orders and which are seriously concerned about the impact of this Bill on their future. Hospices, such as St Joseph’s in London, have already made their opposition to assisted suicide known, and showed how it is inconsistent with the ethos of palliative care. Toby Porter, CEO of Hospices UK has commented: “The implications for hospices must not be underestimated or sidelined. There are huge unanswered questions.”

In its current form the Bill does not sufficiently protect the right of medical practitioners to opt out of participating in assisted suicide. Requiring practitioners to participate in assisted suicide undermines their duty of care, fundamentally changing the relationship between the medical professional and the patient. Doctors and nurses will be unable to opt out of their duty to direct patients to information about assisted suicide. This serious conflict between professional responsibility and personal conscience will be devastating for Catholic practitioners and may cause many of them to leave the medical profession.

This Bill puts the lives of vulnerable patients at risk due to inadequate safeguards against coercion. Evidence from other jurisdictions indicates that patients often feel pressured to choose assisted suicide because they feel as though they are a burden on those caring for them. In addition, countries such as Canada demonstrate that wherever assisted suicide is initially introduced for a limited group, the criteria quickly expand to include the non-terminally ill, and soon those without mental capacity. Moreover, introducing assisted suicide does not reduce the overall number of suicides. Where palliative care provision is absent, individuals will inevitably feel pressured to end their lives.

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