Health: End of Life

Lord Taverne Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taverne (LD)]

My Lords, I strongly support the Motion so eloquently and persuasively moved by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs.

The official position at the moment puts the law in a state that is indefensible. The Director of Public Prosecutions decides whether to prosecute those who help people suffering from an incurable disease who want to die but cannot travel on their own to Dignitas in Switzerland. She decides on a case-by-case basis, at her own discretion.

Take a case of bank robbery. The driver who drives a bank robber to the bank and helps him escape after the robbery is clearly guilty of aiding and abetting. The Director of Public Prosecutions does not say, “I will exercise my discretion whether to prosecute, and I won’t prosecute if, say, the driver intended to share the proceeds of the robbery with his poor old grandmother”. Aiding and abetting a bank robbery is a crime, whatever the driver’s motives.

The law about assisted suicide, as it stands, is equally clear. To help someone die is a serious crime, punishable by up to 14 years of imprisonment. But what is the difference between taking someone to Switzerland to help them to die and driving a bank robber to a bank? Both are equally guilty of a crime. However, when it comes to assisting someone to die, the Director of Public Prosecutions says, “Sometimes I will decide it is a crime and sometimes not. It is entirely for me to decide”. She would never say that in a case of assisting a bank robbery. This practice brings the whole system of justice into disrepute. It makes the law, to quote Mr Bumble, “a ass”. Indeed, that most eminent judge, the late Lord Bingham, said that the law was a mess and needed revision.

In the past, when some laws came to be regarded as intolerable, juries would ignore the law and acquit. At one time it was a capital offence to steal goods worth more than 40 shillings. Juries were required to make two findings: did the defendant steal, and what were the stolen goods worth? If someone stole £10, juries would often find that, yes, he had stolen the goods, and decide that the goods were worth 39 shillings and sixpence, since 40 shillings was the level at which the capital offence became due. Time after time, juries made a nonsense of the law, and the law was changed.

A vast majority of the public consistently tell pollsters that they support assisted suicide and favour a change in the law. I believe the reason is obvious. They want a change because so many have personal experience of the suffering undergone by a dying family member or friend. There is a mass of anecdotal evidence that, because the law is unjust, it is often disregarded by many doctors, who deliberately give some patients an overdose of morphine to end their suffering. But the law says that mercy killing is murder, for which the mandatory penalty is life, even if the act is a compassionate response to a dying person’s request for help to die. I regard that law as monstrous and intolerable.

Perhaps one day, in cases of mercy killing or assisted dying in the most compassionate circumstances, defending counsel may remind juries of their absolute right to acquit. Not long ago, Clive Ponting, acting on principle, broke the Official Secrets Act; his jury cocked a snook at the law and acquitted him. Juries should be reminded that their absolute right to acquit is one of the great virtues of the jury system.