Assisted Dying

[grumpy52]

Should the current bills going through the various parliaments be decided by referendums rather than politicians?

[Badda]

Haven’t we already proved referendums are the reason we have government?

[Esquire]

grumpy52 said:

Should the current bills going through the various parliaments be decided by referendums rather than politicians?

On the basis we ended up with Brexit it's a no from me.

[Ashfordian]

This is exactly the sort of thing that should be decided by a referendum as with the past politicians have proven themselves to be way out of touch with the public.

And it would shut the overly noisy evangelists up when the vote return a majority for it

[kambites]

The problem is that referenda are extremely expensive.

I'm not sure it would have changed anything anyway. A referendum would still have to get through the Lords, whose filibustering is the only reason the English law hasn't been updated already.

[StevieBee]

No. Referendums are used where there are options on fundamental constitutional change such as that which impacts the structure of democracy and the legal aspects of governance. Whilst recognising the unique, emotional aspect at play, legally speaking Assisted Dying Bill is just that - a bill. It's a piece of legislation amongst many others and one that impacts far fewer people than the many other bills that also remain in debate. Allowing a referendum on Assisted Dying would set a precedent that would ultimately see us heading to the polling station every time a piece of legislation required amendment.

That said the emotive element here is sufficiently strong enough to think it could end up being appended to a general election in the same way the Proportional Representation debate was in the 00s.

[Cotty]

Good job we still have some really big cliffs so we can ultimately chose.

[ApOrbital]

Unfortunately this is the sad thing people do in whitby

[snuffy]

Ashfordian said:

This is exactly the sort of thing that should be decided by a referendum as with the past politicians have proven themselves to be way out of touch with the public.

And it would shut the overly noisy evangelists up when the vote return a majority for it

It's not that they are out of touch, it's that they think that they know better.