From: Daily Telegraph

By Christopher Hope and Kate Devlin

Mr Starmer on Wednesday published a list of factors which will help lawyers to decide whether to charge people for assisting suicide.

However, the guidance has been criticised as being a “green light” and providing a “comfort blanket” to help families make the decision to help seriously ill loved ones end their lives early, free from fear of prosecution.

The list of 13 factors which would mean people would be unlikely to be charged with an offence has been published online and lawyers fear families and friends may use this as an easy checklist to help them decide to go ahead with an assisted suicide.

Publishing the first guidelines to be issued since helping someone commit suicide became illegal in 1961, Mr Starmer admitted the advice could lead to a rise in the number of people killing themselves in the UK.

Until now, many people in the UK have travelled Dignitas suicide clinic in Switzerland, where the rules on assisted suicide are more lax.

However, the Australian-based pro-choice group Exit International said yesterday Britain could now replace Switzerland as the country of choice for terminally ill people wanting to end their lives.

In a statement, it said: “Australians will be much more comfortable travelling to London to die.

“There has only been a handful of Australians who have made use of the services of Dignitas in Switzerland, but this has been due to the difficulty of the journey and the thought of dying in a strange country.

“Many of these issues will be resolved by the decision of the UK Public Prosecutor.”

Dan Hyde, a criminal solicitor at Cubism Law, added: “The danger is that people will say 'I have got the guidelines and it is safe to go ahead’. There is a danger that it will become a security blanket.

“The problem is that two people can go through the checklist and come up with different answers. The danger is clearly there. It will lead to more prosecutions.”

Peter Saunders, of Care Not Killing, said: “There must be a real danger that this will be seen as giving the green light to assistance from close relatives or friends, who in many cases might be those who would stand personally to gain from the death of the deceased.”

Simon Gillespie, chief executive of the Multiple Sclerosis Society, said the new guidance gave people “the green light to explore assisted suicide, but without the support of medical professionals their only likely resource is Google”.

As disclosed in The Daily Telegraph yesterday, friends and family who help a loved one to die are more likely to be prosecuted if the victim was under-18, had no evidence of terminal illness and if they stood to gain from the suicide.

Those who are “wholly motivated by compassion”, had only reluctantly agreed to helping with the suicide and had fully helped police with their enquiries, were less likely to face charges.

The guidelines also state that nurses, paid carers or campaigners face prosecution if they help someone to die, but, family doctors or other health professionals who had a “close” relationship with the deceased, would be looked upon more leniently.

The guidance warned that if a victim had a “severe and incurable physical condition or a severe degenerative condition from which there was no possibility of recovery” then a prosecution would be less likely.

There were fears that this could include hundreds of thousands of people suffering chronic fatigue syndrome, dementia and even someone who was in a wheelchair.

Mr Saunders added: “Not only does this classification cover a very wide swathe of medical conditions, including such illnesses as chronic heart disease and most kinds of physical disability, but it also implies that the lives of a whole group of people - those who are seriously ill or disabled – are less deserving of the law’s protection than are others.”

Campaigners whose advice on suicide methods, on websites or in other publications, is used by those wanting to kill themselves could also find themselves prosecuted.

Under 1961 Suicide Act, those who “aid, abet, counsel or procure” someone else’s suicide can be jailed for up to 14 years.

However, in the past seven years just 22 people have been convicted in England and Wales while no one has been prosecuted for helping the 120 Britons who have ended their lives at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland.

Mr Starmer admitted the new guidance could lead to a rise in the number of people asking for help to kill themselves. “Only time will tell. It may do,” he said.

Evan Harris, a leading Liberal Democrat MP, said: “There is likely to be an increase [in assisted suicides]. There may be fewer 'undignified deaths’ because fewer people will linger in pain if they can accept the option of getting help from their loved ones.”

The new rules were published after the Law Lords backed multiple sclerosis sufferer Debbie Purdy’s call for a policy statement on whether people who help someone commit suicide should be prosecuted.

Miss Purdy said: “They seem great because it gives confidence to people like me that we cannot make a decision immediately.”

The mother of Dan James, who died at Dignitas aged 23 after he was left paralysed from the chest down after a rugby accident, said the change was “a step in the right direction”.

She said: “It is a step in the right direction but 18 months to late for us.We are still very angry that Dan had to go through what he did. It made his final months much harder to handle and it is not the way Dan would have wanted to die but we had no choice.”

Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, which backs people’s right to die, described the change as “sensible” and a “significant breakthrough for greater patient choice and protection at the end of life”.

email this page | printer friendly version