Assisted Suicide Law To Apply In Britain And Abroad

Assisted suicide law to apply to deaths in Britain and abroad, Aug. 3, 2009.

Keir Starmer, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, is to clarify whether people should be prosecuted for aiding a suicide following a landmark ruling by the Law Lords last week. It had been assumed that this guidance would affect only cases in which friends or relatives helped people to die abroad, such as at the Dignitas clinic in Zurich.

However, in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Starmer said the “broad principles” of his new guidelines would apply equally to acts of assisted suicide planned and carried out at home.

He denied that any new interpretation of the law would lead to a large increase in assisted suicides, as was suggested by campaigners opposed to the legalisation of the practice.

Mr Starmer was forced to come forward with guidance on the law after a legal victory last week by Debbie Purdy, 46, from Bradford, who suffers from multiple sclerosis. She brought a case against the DPP because she wanted to know whether her husband would be prosecuted if he helped her commit suicide overseas.

Under the 1961 Suicide Act, those who aid, abet, counsel or procure someone else’s suicide can be prosecuted and punished with up to 14 years in jail. However, no one has been prosecuted for doing so.

Mr Starmer made clear that the new guidelines would apply to all assisted suicides.

“This is not a policy that’s going to apply only to those who go abroad. Newspapers are saying that, but they’re wrong,” he said.

“This policy is going to cover all assisted suicides. The same broad principles will apply. They’ve got to apply to all acts, in the jurisdiction or out of it.

“We won’t have separate rules for Dignitas.”

Mr Starmer would not be arguing for wholesale changes in the law but said “Parliament has to speak” on the anomaly of assisted suicide being illegal in Britain but permitted in Switzerland.

The DPP has been reluctant to clarify the law for fear of making it easier for unscrupulous relatives who might want to bring about the death of an elderly relative for sinister reasons.

In his Telegraph interview, Mr Starmer gave an insight into the difficulties he faced in drafting the new guidelines.

“On the question of whether this is better dealt with by Parliament, there’s nothing much I can do to nudge them along,” he said. “They’re divided, there’s no inclination to change the law, so we have no choice but to produce this policy.”

On the distinction between assisted suicide at home and abroad, he added: “We can’t change the law, just fill in the policy. That would require a change of the law.

“Not everyone has the means to go abroad to commit suicide, and a political decision has to be made on whether some assisted suicide is legal. That decision needs to be made by Parliament.”

Mr Starmer’s insistence that he would prefer Parliament to rule on the matter was unlikely, however, to provoke the Government to intervene in such a sensitive area. And he accepted that the House of Lords judgment gave him a mandate to shape the law.

In the past year, 23 Britons have died at Dignitas. Several hundred more were believed to be on its waiting list. Mr Starmer used the example of Daniel James, a 23 year-old paralysed playing rugby who died at the Swiss clinic, to illustrate his point that the location of a suicide would make no difference.

“In the Daniel James case, the acts we focused on were those that took place before they left England, and it didn’t much matter where the suicide was,” he said. “The factors we took into account — whether he was exercising individual judgment, whether there was any undue influence by the parents, whether they sought to persuade rather than assist him — will be as relevant for those acting inside the jurisdiction as for those acting outside.”

Mr Starmer’s comments suggested that he would be sympathetic to those who colluded in assisted suicide but he did not expect a rush of cases. “I don’t think there are hundreds of people waiting to commit suicide depending on any policy I make,” he said.

He was expected to publish an interim policy next month for public consultation. A permanent policy would be published next spring.

By Andrew Porter and Mary Riddell, Telegraph, UK