Assisted suicide guidance welcomed
By Simon Caldwell

5 March 2010

Kier Starmer,the Public Prosecutor has released assisted suicide guidelines

The bishops of England and Wales have welcomed assisted suicide guidelines that allow people to avoid prosecution if motivated by "wholly by compassion".

They expressed relief that Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, had dropped a proposed legal defence against prosecution if a person was a spouse, relative or friend of the victim or if the suspect had assisted in the suicide of a patient with a terminal illness, a severe disability or degenerative physical condition with no cure.

Archbishop Peter Smith of Cardiff said Mr Starmer had "listened very carefully to, and taken account of, the many representations made to him" during six months of public consultation on the guidelines.

"Our particular concerns were that the interim Guidelines gave less protection under the law to disabled or seriously ill people, and to those who had a history of suicide attempts and were likely to try again," said Archbishop Smith, the chairman of the department of responsibility and citizenship of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales.

"There also appeared to be a presumption that a spouse or close relative would always act simply out of compassion and never from selfish motives," he said.

"These factors have been removed from the new guidelines which now give greater protection to some of the most vulnerable people in our society," he said.

"There is also a greater stress on the fact that the law has not changed, that all cases will be investigated and that no one is being given immunity from prosecution under these guidelines."

Mr Starmer was ordered to produce the guidance following a July 2009 ruling in the House of Lords in a case brought by Debbie Purdy, a multiple sclerosis sufferer.

Miss Purdy of Bradford, West Yorkshire, had demanded to know if her husband, Omar Puente, would be prosecuted if he helped her to travel to the Dignitas euthanasia clinic in Switzerland to commit suicide. More than 100 British citizens have killed themselves in the clinic but there has not been a single prosecution of anyone who has accompanied them - although assisted suicide is punishable by up to 14 years in jail under the 1961 Suicide Act - suggesting that the law was not being enforced.

The Law Lords obliged Mr Starmer to spell out exactly how the state would respond if someone helped a person to commit suicide.

Euthanasia campaigners supporting Miss Purdy's challenge were hoping that a clarification would lead to an effective change in the law and that assisted suicide would become legal.

Starmer's guidelines have not resulted in this outcome, however. The new guidelines set out six situations in which a prosecution is unlikely, reducing them from an initial 16 in the interim guidance.

A person will avoid prosecution only if it can be demonstrated that the victim had reached a voluntary, clear, settled and informed decision; the suspect was wholly motivated by compassion; the suspect had sought to dissuade the victim from suicide; the suspect's actions may be characterised as reluctant encouragement or assistance in the face of a determined wish on the part of the victim, and the suspect reported the suicide to the police and cooperated in their inquiries.

Factors favouring a prosecution include if the victim was under 18 years old; the victim lacked mental capacity or had not expressed a clear decision to commit suicide; the suspect gained from the death, pressured the victim or had a history of violence or abuse against the victim. A suspect will also be prosecuted if they were unknown to the victim, assisted in the suicide of more than one person, was a professional caring for the victim, or belonged to a euthanasia campaign group. Mr Starmer said the Suicide Act was not meant to bring all people who assisted suicides to trial and that discretion was needed in each case.

He told reporters that the guidance had been revised so that "policy is now more focused on the motivation of the suspect rather than the characteristics of the victim".

In November the bishops had severely criticised Mr Starmer's interim guidance for allegedly creating categories of people whose lives, would be legally considered less worthy of protection than the rest of society.

They said the draft guidance stigmatised the disabled, the terminally ill, the depressed and the aged and "could encourage criminal behaviour" by signalling that it was acceptable to help such people to kill themselves.

The new guidance was criticised by Paul Tully of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children who said implicit discrimination against the infirm "is more subtle, but it is still there".