New assisted suicide guidelines a 'missed chance for debate'

Published on Thursday 25 February 2010 21:45

AN MSP campaigning to legalise assisted suicide said Westminster MPs should follow Scotland's example and have a proper debate on the issue.

Independent MSP Margo MacDonald said new guidelines issued on the subject in England and Wales yesterday were neither clear nor equitable.

The guidelines said the motives of those assisting suicide will be at the centre of the decision over whether or not to prosecute them.

The chief prosecutor for England and Wales, Keir Starmer, made it clear that anyone assisting suicide who benefited from the death was unlikely to be prosecuted as long as compassion was the "driving force".

However, he said the policy did not change the law on assisted suicide or "open the door for euthanasia".

Ms MacDonald said MPs had failed to take the opportunity to debate the issue, whereas her End of Life Choices Bill was soon to go before a parliamentary committee at Holyrood. She said Westminster MPs had missed a crucial chance to change the law south of the Border.

Assisted suicide is a criminal offence in England and Wales, punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

Ms MacDonald said: "I think the MPs have fallen down on the job here. There was time to debate the law and determine whether or not the law had to change."

She added: "What Keir Starmer has done is very well-intentioned. But he hasn't made it less complicated, he hasn't made it clearer, he hasn't made it equitable."

Mr Starmer was forced to issue the guidelines after a Law Lords ruling in favour of Debbie Purdy, from West Yorkshire, who has multiple sclerosis and wanted to know whether her husband would be prosecuted for helping her to end her life.

Ms MacDonald said that whereas in their case the issue "might be put aside", this might not be so in other, less public cases. The new guidelines also remove the reference to husbands and wives or close friends being less likely to be prosecuted due to their relationship to the victim.

However, Ms MacDonald said: "I came to the conclusion some time ago that it should not be friends or family who should assist someone to bring their life to an end, but that it should be a medically qualified person."

Ms Purdy welcomed the new guidelines on assisted suicide, saying they had "given me my life back".

But she vowed to continue campaigning for a change to the law, to give other people the same clarity she feels she now has herself.

Ms Purdy, of Bradford, has fought a long and hard battle to find out whether her husband, Omar Puente, would be prosecuted for helping her to end her life. She now knows that if Mr Puente, a Cuban violinist, is judged to have acted with compassion, then a prosecution will not be pursued.

Ms Purdy criticised Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has warned against legalising assisted suicide.

He argues that changing the law would risk putting vulnerable people under pressure to end their lives and result in an erosion of trust in the caring professions.

Author Sir Terry Pratchett said the guidance was "the best we can get without a change in the law".

Sir Terry, 61, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease, used a lecture earlier this month to call for tribunals in cases where people were seeking to end their lives.