Assisted Suicide

John Pugh Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Dame Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment (a), at the end of the Question to add,

‘and invites the Government to consult as to whether to put the guidance on a statutory basis.’.

I very much welcome this debate and the fact that the Backbench Business Committee has found time for it. I congratulate the hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) on the very considered way in which he presented the motion. The amendment, which stands in my name and those of the hon. Members for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) and for Solihull (Lorely Burt), invites the Government to consult as to whether to put the policy on a statutory basis. I believe the time has come to give the public and stakeholders an opportunity to comment on the Director of Public Prosecutions’ policy in practice. The amendment invites the Government to place the DPP’s policy on a statutory footing but does not demand that.

The final version of the policy on assisted suicide has now been in place for more than two years. The draft policy was the subject of heated debate, particularly in relation to the health or disability status of the assisted person, the actions of health care professionals and the relative weight to be given to the motivation of the assister. However, there are still some areas of concern in relation to the policy, most notably its impact on doctors where there is less clarity. A patient with a terminal condition may wish to discuss with a health care professional their desire for assistance to end their life. Similarly, a patient who has come to a decision may wish to obtain their medical records in order to be assisted to die overseas.

If the Government were to hold a consultation on whether the DPP’s policy on assisted suicide should be placed in statute, I am confident that we would learn much from the response of the public and the stakeholders working with the DPP’s policy. Essentially, placing the policy in statute would reinforce not only that the DPP has discretion in deciding on prosecutions in assisted suicide cases, which is already plain in the wording of the Suicide Act 1961, but also the factors that must be considered in taking these decisions. Placing the policy in statute would signal in the strongest possible way that Parliament agrees that those who maliciously or irresponsibly encourage suicide should be prosecuted, but that it is not normally in the public interest to prosecute an otherwise law-abiding citizen who helps a loved one to die on compassionate grounds.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

It is clear that the DPP has discretion. How does placing something on a statutory footing show that the DPP has discretion?

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

Clearly, if the existing guidelines were put into statute they would lie alongside existing statute. I will go on to explain why I think it is very important that they should be in statute.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

This is an issue where life, rather than logic, will change people’s minds, but I will have to rely on logic for the moment.

In 1961 the act of suicide was legalised, for whatever reason but in a wholly unqualified way, and, cutting through the fine words, what we are considering is legalising not a person killing themselves but, under defined circumstances, a person participating in the killing of another. This debate, to some extent, is a proxy for that, but, we seem to be arguing around and, possibly, avoiding arguing about whether an individual can claim a right in law to request that someone, possibly a state agency or a private individual, assists them in ending their life. It is not clear whether giving people this right puts anyone under an obligation, but it is clear that anyone acting in a way that enables a person to exercise the right would not be committing a crime if the law was changed, just as there are people in Switzerland who kill and volunteer to kill many people but are clearly distinguishable from murderers.

The legality of suicide, as presented in the law, is unqualified, but I think that we would all accept that the right to assist suicide has to be qualified to distinguish it from more heinous behaviour. I do not believe that there is any satisfactory way of doing that in law, and there is no evidence that it has ever been done satisfactorily in practice, because the right to assisted suicide is qualified in different ways in different countries—for very good reasons, but normally in an unsatisfactory fashion. In my view, there is no way in which we can qualify this right that will make the potential benefits outweigh the potential harm, even if we set aside the wider potential alleged social harms that may come from embodying euthanasia in our society, such as pressure on the elderly and diminishing respect for disabled people and for life itself.

Those are very persuasive arguments, but I would like to concentrate specifically on whether we can free assisted suicide, as a proposition, from all taint of harm, however we qualify it. Most people vigorously assert that consent must be a condition, and there are obviously cases in which it would be nonsense to deny that a person does not fully and knowingly consent. However, it is also abundantly clear that free consent is never a sufficient condition to claim the right for assisted suicide, nor to excuse a person who assisted them. Otherwise, we would tolerate assisted suicide in cases of people who enjoyed tolerable health but may have a range of reasons for wishing to be dead, not all of them laudable. Euthanasia on demand is not, I think, a proposition that anybody in this House cares to advance. In fact, we would all agree that it would be a wholly inappropriate response for people who are mentally ill or temporarily depressed.

Consent by itself is never a sufficient condition unless it is coupled with something else, which is usually the possibility of suffering or loss of dignity that an individual is unwilling to bear. It is also usually anticipated as being something that occurs in the last stages of terminal disease, but logically it need not be so. One cannot support euthanasia on the grounds that a level of indignity and suffering characterises a short period before death, and not support it if a lifetime of similar indignity and suffering lies ahead. One cannot easily argue for euthanasia for the terminally ill and not, at the same time, for euthanasia for those who are permanently suffering. It is the character and the extent of the suffering and indignity that counts, not where it is placed in someone’s life cycle.

Thus, free consent plus great suffering would, on the face of it, appear to make a minimum case for a civilised version of euthanasia. However, there is a sting in the tail. If we allow euthanasia for those who are either in great pain or unwilling to face the probability of great pain, why should those who are, for whatever reason, incapable of giving consent be denied mercy if they are thought to endure exactly parallel circumstances? In other words, why privilege those who are compos mentis—those fortunate enough to have their wits about them? Thus, by force of argument, one moves from being unsure about whether consent is a sufficient condition to being unsure about whether it is a necessary condition.