Thank you for contacting
me about assisted suicide.
I appreciate your concern
on this very sensitive issue. Coping with terminal illness is distressing and
difficult both for the patient and their families. These cases are truly moving
and evoke the highest degree of compassion and emotion.
A Private Members Bill
seeking to legalise Assisted Suicide is to be brought before Parliament in
September 2015. This issue, probably more than any other that this Parliament
is likely to consider, is a matter of conscience.
I have a great deal of
sympathy for people on both sides of this issue. I have considered my own views
very carefully before reaching a conclusion. My personal belief is that I could
not support any legislation that would legalise assisted dying. I intend to
attend the debate and I will be voting against the bill. There are many factors
that bring me to this view.
The law, which already
makes provision for such circumstances, is working, and does not need changing.
Assisting or encouraging suicide is a criminal offence under Section 2 of the
Suicide Act 1961 for which the maximum penalty is 14 years’ imprisonment.
However, the Director of Public Prosecutions (“DPP”) has discretion not to
prosecute in certain compassionate cases.
Guidelines published by
the DPP are primarily concerned with advising the Crown Prosecution Service on
the factors they need to consider when deciding whether it is in the public
interest to prosecute a person for assisting or encouraging another to commit
suicide. The DPP’s policy offers
important and sensitive guidance on when to prosecute, but makes clear that
assisting a person to die is still illegal and anyone doing this faces the risk
of a murder charge if prosecuted.
If, as a society, we made
assisted suicide legal, we would in my view, be fundamentally changing the very
foundation of our civil society. We would be legitimising the fears and
anxieties of so many sick and vulnerable people who worry that they are a burden
on those around them and on society more widely. As a compassionate society,
our response to suicidal feelings must never be a lethal injection.
For every person that we
might consider to have a clear and settled wish to end their lives, there are
countless others who are vulnerable, despairing and often lacking in support
who may feel under pressure – internal or external – to go through with this
decision.
This is the main reason
that no major disability group favours a change in the law. This Bill
legitimises the idea that suicide is a solution for disability and severe
sickness. Where assisted suicide is legal around the world, the data shows that
those who choose suicide are almost invariably disabled. They need assistance
to live, not assistance to die.
Those who support assisted
dying often point to safeguards as the remedy to this problem. But, as years of
debate on this issue in the House of Lords has shown, there is no safeguard
that would be sufficient to stop a person who feels a burden on their family,
friend or caregivers from ending their life; nor can doctors accurately assess
this, or worse, pressure or abuse which does regrettably exist, in certain
cases.
This is why none of the
Royal Medical Colleges support a change in the law. In fact, the British
Medical Association, the Royal College of GPs and the Royal College of
Physicians, actively oppose such a change for that very reason. Legalising
assisting dying would fundamentally change the nature of the doctor/patient
relationship. A doctor is not a detective and cannot reasonably be expected to
investigate all of the relevant social factors involved in such a grave
decision. That would take a close, consistent and long-term relationship which
very few doctors have with their patients today. Any suggestion that this
fundamental problem can be lessened by the arbitration on by a High Court judge
is similarly groundless, as the judge would have even less knowledge and
capacity to judge whether pressure, overt or covert, had been placed on the
individual.
I am also concerned that,
as has been the case in other countries, legalising assisted suicide would lead
to demands for legalisation of other forms of euthanasia – for example in
Belgium, where in 2002, a euthanasia law was passed for adults, in 2014 – a law
was passed enabling children to be euthanized. In Oregon – upon which this
assisted suicide law is based - the extension of their assisted suicide law is
currently being considered.
In Britain, we lead the
world in palliative care. Our response to the physical and emotional pain of
terminal illness must be to show compassion by extending and developing this
further. Not by letting people die when they most need encouragement and
assistance to live.
My view is that if we were
to legalise assisted dying we would be crossing a line that would lead to the
devaluing of life. This is not something I am prepared to support.
