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Brown rejects change to suicide law ahead of TV documentary showing death of terminally ill man

By Steve Doughty – (Daily Mail UK)

Helping someone to commit suicide is a matter of conscience, the Prime Minister said today.
Gordon Brown condemned the idea of new laws to allow assisted suicide – but he did nothing to stop it in the wake of a landmark test case decision that paved the way for more deaths in the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland.

His response in the Commons to the outcry over the televised suicide of motor neurone disease sufferer Craig Ewert appealed instead for compassion for families agonising over the suffering of a loved one.

Mr Brown spoke following the statement by Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer QC that there will be no prosecution in case of Daniel James, who killed himself after being paralysed in a rugby accident.

Mr Starmer said there was evidence to convict Daniel’s parents and a family friend. But he said there was no public interest in a prosecution when no-one had tried to persuade the 23-year-old to die. Rather his family had begged him to live.

The 1961 Suicide Act sets down a 14-year maximum jail term for anyone found guilty of aiding or abetting someone in arranging their own death.

The combined effect of the opinions of the Prime Minister and the chief public official responsible for bringing charges sent a powerful signal that no-one will be prosecuted in future for taking a terminally ill relative or friend to a death at the Dignitas suicide clinic in Switzerland.
Only those who help in suicide for their own gain are likely to be brought to court.

Mr Brown set down his view during clashes in the Commons over the Craig Ewart case.

The death of 59-year-old Mr Ewart, an American-born former university professor, in September 2006, will be shown on a Sky documentary channel tonight.

The Prime Minister was asked if the broadcast of an assisted death was in the public interest or whether it was merely distasteful voyeurism.

He replied that it was for individuals to decide and that he opposed new laws to permit assisted suicide because of the possibility that they could be used to pressure the vulnerable.

Mr Brown said: ‘These are very difficult issues and we should all remember at the heart of any single individual case are families and people in very difficult circumstances who have to make for themselves very difficult choices and none of us would want to go through that.

‘I believe it is a matter of conscience and there are different views on each side of the House about what should be done.’

He added: ‘I believe that it is necessary to ensure that there is never a case in the country where a sick or elderly person feels under pressure to agree to an assisted death or somehow feels it is the expected thing to do.

‘That is why I have always opposed legislation for assisted deaths.’

The Prime Minister also said the TV broadcast should be referred to the television regulator OFCOM.

He said: ‘I think it is very important that these issues are dealt with sensitively and without sensationalism.

‘I hope broadcasters remember that they have a wider duty to the general public and of course it will be a matter for the television watchdogs when the broadcast is shown.’

Mr Brown’s view on assisted suicide clashes with that of disability organisations and anti-euthanasia campaigners who say that allowing it will always mean a shove towards the grave for those who come to feel they are worthless, too much trouble, or in the way.

But it came as the DPP appeared to seal the longstanding reluctance by the courts and prosecution authorities to act against Dignitas and those who use the freedom to commit suicide given by Swiss law.

Mr Starmer’s predecessor at the Crown Prosecution Service, Ken Macdonald, had carefully avoided setting down any view on assisted suicide that could interfere with police investigations or court judgements.

The new DPP, who took up his job less than two months ago, said that there was enough evidence in the Daniel James case to secure convictions against his parents, who paid Dignitas and travelled with Daniel to Zurich, and against a family friend who booked the family’s flights.

But he said: ‘I would point to the fact that Daniel, as a fiercely independent young man, was not influenced by his parents to take his own life and the evidence indicates that he did so despite their imploring him not to.’

It would, he said, not be in the public interest to prosecute.

More than 100 people are claimed to have ended their lives at the Dignitas clinic.

However, despite police investigations in some case, no prosecutions have followed.

Four years ago a High Court judge made it possible for an unnamed 65-year-old terminally ill woman to kill herself by lifting an injunction that had prevented her husband from travelling with her to Switzerland.

The law is, however, used in cases where there are suspicions that someone may have procured a suicide out of self-interest.

A recent case was that of prison officer Patricia Mulpeter, who encouraged her dying lesbian lover to commit suicide by suffocation after the couple had spent a £10,000 bank loan travelling around the West Country together.

A charge of murder was dropped, and a judge said she deserved compassion. Miss Mulpeter was given a 28 day suspended sentence for assisting suicide in July.

The shift towards allowing assisted suicide was condemned by campaigners. Phyllis Bowman of Right to Life said: ‘What kind of effect do they think this will have on a depressive? It undermines the vulnerable and it undermines people’s right to life.’

There was also growing pressure on Sky, which said its programme was meant to ‘inform public debate about even the most challenging subjects.’

Phil Willis, Liberal Democrat MP for Harrogate where Mr Ewert lived, said the film was trying to ‘promote assisted suicide’ and should not be shown.

‘While I have huge sympathy for Mary Ewert and the rest of the family and indeed the great courage of Craig Ewert, their private decisions I do not think should be made the subject of a public film which is available to everybody,’ he said.

‘Many people will watch it not because they are interested in the issue of assisted suicide but because it is good television.’

Dr Peter Saunders of the campaign group Care Not Killing said: ‘There is a growing appetite from the British public for increasingly bizarre reality shows. It is a slippery slope.’

But Joan Bakewell, the Government’s newly-appointed champion for the elderly, said on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme: ‘There is nothing frivolous about this and there is nothing that everyone who is alive cannot envisage and think about and many people are anxious and worried.

‘This film might allay their worries.’

OFCOM said it had received complaints but it could not act on them until after the programme has been broadcast.

Right to Die will be shown on Sky Real Lives tonight at 9pm.