Assisted Dying (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-09-11
Topic: Law and Crime
Keir Starmer (Labour, Centre-left): For the reasons I have given, I genuinely think it may be more helpful for the House if I just completed the exercise. I am deliberately trying not to put my views into this chronology so that people can simply see it for what it is, whatever view they take Debbie Purdy persuaded the committee that I should be required to produce guidelines. In the last judgment of the House of Lords judicial committee before it became the Supreme Court on the other side of Parliament Square, it ordered that I should do so. I was, of course, at that stage deeply aware of the views that were held on all sides, and I decided that a very wide public consultation was necessary so that the guidelines would be as fully informed as they possibly could be. I decided also to issue interim guidelines so that people could see the words on the page of the guidelines before the consultation exercise started, and so that it would be a meaningful consultation rather than one where views would be expressed in the abstract but without a real, detailed eye on what I was proposing The interim guidelines were underpinned by two principles. The first was that the criminal law should rarely, if ever, be used against those who compassionately assist loved ones to die at their request, so long as that person had reached a voluntary, clear, settled and informed decision to end their life. The second was that very strong safeguards are needed to protect those who might be pressurised in any number of subtle ways. Those who encourage the death of the vulnerable should feel the full force of the law The response to that consultation exercise was huge. Most criminal justice consultation exercises have responses numbered in the low hundreds; the response to my consultation exercise was nearly 5,000, and that is treating all the heads of faiths as one respondee when, in truth, they were responding on behalf of very many within their communities. It was probably the widest consultation on this particular area of our law ever conducted. It included, as one would expect, members of the public, doctors, other healthcare professionals, representatives of all faith groups, judges, public servants, Members of this House and Members of the House of Lords. In the course of that exercise, I personally met many who were most concerned about the guidelines. There was overwhelming support for the interim guidelines that I had published and the two principles that underpinned them: compassionate assistance to those who are clear they want to end their lives, yes; pressurising the vulnerable, no. Accordingly, when I issued the final guidance that is still in force, I adopted the same two underpinning principles. They have now been used for five years. I personally oversaw about 80 cases, looking at the details in each of the files, and made decisions in 79 of those cases that no prosecution should be brought, and there was no clamour to change the guidelines Throughout the process, I thought long and hard about the position of doctors and health professionals, and whether their acts of assistance should come within the guidelines, in favour of prosecution or against. I took the view then, and I still hold the view now, that if the DPP indicated that doctors or medical professionals were unlikely to be prosecuted for assisting, that would undermine the intention of Parliament when it passed the Suicide Act 1961. I took the view that Parliament was not prepared to go that far when it passed that Act, and that the DPP should not, by the back door, as it were, indicate in the guidance that doctors and health professionals would be unlikely to be prosecuted if they assisted. Therefore, in the guidelines, when they were first drafted and as they are now, a factor making it more likely that someone will be prosecuted is that they are a doctor or a health professional assisting someone That particular issue came to a head in the Tony Nicklinson case, which went to the Supreme Court recently. Tony Nicklinson, as many people in this House will know, suffered a series of strokes and became completely paralysed save that he could move his head and eyes. Because of his paralysed state, he could not carry out his wish to end his life without assistance. He applied to the High Court for an order—a declaration—that he be permitted a doctor to assist him in his death. When he lost his case in the High Court at the first stage, Mr Nicklinson embarked on the difficult and painful course of self-starvation, refusing nutrition, fluids and medical treatment. His case proceeded to the Supreme Court, as everybody here knows, and in June 2012 the majority held that there was an incompatibility between our current position and fundamental human rights, but because of the margin of appreciation they should not themselves make a declaration to that effect but leave it to Parliament to further consider the issue, and today is that opportunity.