Sir Terry Pratchett’s proposals for a tribunal to license assisted dying will add a welcome and significant boost an idea we have long advocated.

I would like to see a tribunal composed of an independent psychiatrist, a tribunal judge and a social worker. They would review the medical, psychiatric and social issues around a proposal that a person with an incurable illness could be cleared to use the services of doctors or others to assist in ending their life without incurring the risk of criminal sanctions.

At the moment we are drifting towards creating a deliberate loophole in the criminal law in a fashion that we may well come to lament. An appropriately constituted tribunal would provide a forum in which individual cases could be judged in prospect. This is not an area in which one size fits all cases.

Guy Otten, senior solicitor, Hempsons, Manchester