Member

There are many more people I could mention. The current law does not protect people; it abandons them, often to die in pain, sometimes to die without dignity, sometimes to die alone in a foreign country or relying on the quiet, unregulated compassion of those around them. My mother was fortunate; many are not. These people—nurses, teachers, parents, magistrates—deserved better. So do thousands of people like them who face the same choice, or the absence of one, this year and every year that follows. Our colleagues in the other place raised the hopes of the nation last year by passing this Bill and I am sorry that we have let them down. All I can say and pledge, and I know I speak for many of our colleagues here, is that we will try, try and try again to bring this Bill back as soon as possible in the next Session, to do what is right democratically and, most importantly of all, to give those people who are terminally ill hope of the choice of a better way to die.