While no one should underestimate the complexity of safeguarding (and Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill, if anything, does the opposite), Diane Abbott and Edward Leigh inadvertently make the case for legalising assisted dying when they say that “the only adequate safeguard is to keep the law unchanged” (Our politics could not be more different – but we’re united against this dangerous assisted dying bill, 20 November).
The law as it stands is an inhumane set of traps. In 1961, it decriminalised suicide and then criminalised “encouraging or assisting” it – two different things. Encouraging suicide should continue to be a crime. The proposed reform is about whether it should continue to be a crime to assist a mentally competent adult to bring a dignified conclusion to a life that is approaching its end. If it is open to criticism, it is for leaving out individuals who face an incurable condition with no end in sight.
At the instigation of the law lords in 2009, the director of public prosecutions (then Keir Starmer) drew up a code to indicate the circumstances in which he would exercise his discretion not to prosecute people who have assisted a suicide. It is predicated on something the common law has for centuries set its face against: self-incrimination. The code requires the helper to have gone to the police with a full account. Where a prosecution has taken place, juries have repeatedly acquitted.
Abbott and Leigh should think again. They must know that the case for doing nothing is always seductive and usually mistaken.
Stephen Sedley
Court of appeal judge, 1999-2011
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