What is a parliament for?

Why do we have elections and send people to parliament?   Is it simply to go as a mouth piece for the majority view in their constituencies?  (What about the views of the minority, don’t they count?) Or do we send them there to listen to debates than take informed decisions?

I ask the question because today we had a vote in the UK parliament on what is known as assisted suicide.  Others call it assisted dying.  You can see immediately there are passionate views held on both sides even in the way the process is described.

The debate was a powerful and dignified one.  Some muse that parliament is at its best on such occasions.  For example, an emotional Dr Philippa Whitford, the SNP's health spokeswoman and a breast cancer surgeon, argued that with good palliative care, the "journey can lead to a beautiful death".  "We should support letting people live every day of their lives till the end," she said, and she urged MPs to vote for "life and dignity, not death".

But here’s the thing.  74% of MPs voted against this bill compared with 72% back in 1997. So the message from politicians has been an overwhelming rejection of the right to an assisted suicide.  And opinion is not shifting.  The emphatic nature of the result would suggest politicians are unlikely to discuss this again soon.

Campaigners will no doubt regroup and point to their own polls showing 82% of the public back assisted dying and calls for change may yet intensify with an ageing population.

So, the question is, do we send people to parliament simply to do the will of the majority at any given time?  Or do we send them there to debate all the angles and come to a rational decision on our behalf having listened and sifted the evidence in a proper debate.

Sarah Wootton, the chief executive of Dignity in Dying, said it was an "outrage" that MPs had gone against the views of the majority of the public who supported the bill.  And it is here I think we see people like her are missing the point.  We don’t send people to parliament to simply do what the majority of people apparently want. 

We send people to parliament to listen, debate and make good law.  If that is not why we send our MPs to Westminster then the point of a parliament has gone.  We might as well just do opinion polls whenever we want to take a decision.