Assisted Dying

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Monday 13th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge]

My Lords, I find tonight's Question troubling as its precursor is: should the Government be assessing the application of DPP policy? I view the DPP rather like the icing in the middle of the judicial sponge cake. The top layer is the independence of judges, and the bottom layer is police operational independence. It is imperative that DPP policy and decisions are free from, and seen to be free from, government interference. I do not envy my noble friend the Minister's task in performing this assessment this evening without creating any perception of political interference in, or inadvertent pressure on, prosecution decisions and policies. These roles would also be blurred if the DPP guidelines had been statutory, as how could he then revise them? The independent DPP would be dependent on the Government or parliamentarians to change the legislation or statutory instrument. If the House were asking how the Government are assessing the application of DPP policy for prosecutions in cases of phone-hacking, constitutional alarm bells would, I believe, have gone off immediately.