Assisted Suicide

Baroness Cumberlege Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Cumberlege (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, for initiating this debate and for introducing it so competently. I will be brief.

As your Lordships are aware, the policy for prosecutors was published in 2010 in respect of cases of encouraging or assisting suicide. A year after it appeared, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, chaired a group calling itself the Commission on Assisted Dying. The then Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, told the group:

“There is a residual discretion for all offences whether to prosecute or not”.

He went on to say:

“This is a particular version of it. But it’s not unique by any stretch of the imagination; it’s the way our law operates”.

That is helpful, as it puts this particular policy into perspective. It is sometimes presented to us as something unusual, but it is not. As with many other offences, encouraging or assisting suicide can cover a wide range of criminality, from malicious assistance for personal gain to reluctant assistance after much soul-searching and from wholly compassionate motives. It is impossible to make criminal laws that cater for every conceivable circumstance. That is why we need discretion.

The judgment of the Supreme Court in 2009 was that the DPP should publish a prosecution policy in respect of encouraging or assisting suicide. The draft policy was subjected to a four-month public consultation, to which the CPS received nearly 5,000 responses. The policy that appeared four years ago was not, therefore, put together overnight. It is the result of careful thought and open consultation.

I am not in favour of trying to fiddle with the policy. There is no serious evidence that the law on encouraging or assisting suicide is not working as it should. Thanks to the deterrent effect of the present law, the offence is a rare one, and the few cases that occur tend to be those at the compassionate end of the spectrum, where prosecution is unnecessary. In the words of the former DPP to the group of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, the law “works well in practice”. I agree with him.