The UK economy has heightened euthanasia concerns for people with disabilities and the elderly

Baroness Jane Campbell stated in an article published in the Telegraph newspaper that: 

Baroness Jane Campbell

Hostility towards disabled and elderly in wake of recession means it would be a ‘dangerous time’ to consider changing law no assisted suicide. 

The threat to frail elderly and disabled people from relatives tempted to get rid of them under the guise of euthanasia has grown “dramatically” in the wake of the economic downturn, one of Britain’s most prominent disability campaigners has claimed.

An article written by John Bingham and published in the Telegraph states that Baroness Campbell of Surbiton, issued an impassioned plea in the House of Lords against moves to further relax Britain’s laws on assisted suicide. The article reported that:

The guidelines drawn up by the former Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Keir Starmer four years ago signal that people who assist a loved one to take their own life out of compassion are unlikely to be prosecuted. 

Baroness Jay, the Labour peer, who tabled the debate on the prosecution guidelines, argued that the current law is “ambiguous”. 

Later this year peers are also due to debate a private member’s bill tabled by Lord Falconer, the Labour former Lord Chancellor, to legalise so-called “assisted dying” in Britain for the first time. 

She said the rules could be exploited by people who lie to police about a relative’s intentions after they have apparently taken their own life.

Court of Appeal in Britain upholds lower court ruling, protecting UK citizens from euthanasia.

Alex Schadenberg

By Alex Schadenberg, 

International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Court of Appeals in Britain released its decision today in the Nicklinson/Lamb euthanasia case by upholding the decision of the lower court by rejecting the argument that an exception to homicide can be created to allow euthanasia based on a defense of necessity. The Court of Appeal also upheld that only parliament can change laws prohibiting euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Mr Lamb was seeking a court declaration that any doctor who helped him to die would have a defence against a charge of murder. The defence is known as "necessity", meaning it was necessary for the doctor to act to stop his suffering.

There has been confusion concerning the Nicklinson/Lamb case which was asking the court to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide. To legalize euthanasia, the court would have had to create an exception to the homicide (murder) Act in the UK.

A third plaintiff in the case, known only as Martin, appears to have won his intervention by being granted the right to have greater clarification in the prosecution guidelines with respect to assisted suicide.

Lord Judge

Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions stated that he would appeal the Martin decision to the Supreme Court.

Lord Judge, as Lord Chief Justice, said: 

"the law relating to assisting suicide cannot be changed by judicial decision". 

"whatever the personal views of any individual judge on these delicate and sensitive subjects - and I suspect that the personal views of individual judges would be as contradictory as those held by any other group of people - the constitutional imperative is that, however subtle and impressive the arguments to the contrary may be, we cannot effect the changes or disapply the present statutory provisions, not because we are abdicating our responsibility, but precisely because we are fulfilling our proper constitutional role".

Dr Andrew Fergusson of the Care Not Killing Alliance in the UK, a group that intervened in the case, stated:

The judgment comprehensively and completely dismissed these appeals, which sought to alter legislation covering murder. 

"All three judges strongly rejected the notion that 'necessity' should be a defence in euthanasia cases, saying this was not compatible with English Law. Further, the blanket prohibition on assisted suicide in the UK is not contrary to Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights."

"The judges, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, the Master of the Rolls, Lord Dyson and Lord Justice Elias, recognised that changing the laws on murder and suicide are matters for Parliament alone. They acknowledged that these issues had been debated by Parliament frequently in recent years."

"And they confirmed the simple truth that the current law exists to protect the vulnerable and those without a voice: disabled people, terminally ill people and elderly people, who might otherwise feel pressured into ending their lives."

Dr Andrew Fergusson

Dr Fergusson continued: 

"Two of the three judges concluded that the DPP should issue some very minor clarification to the prosecution guidelines covering assisted suicide for 'class two cases' requiring the involvement of a health professional. We were persuaded by the dissenting opinion from the UK's most senior judge that change was unnecessary and unhelpful, but, importantly, this clarification does not change the current law."

"These latest court cases, along with previous cases and the numerous debates in Parliament confirm that there is a limit to choice in a democratic and tolerant society. The judges acknowledged these are three tragic cases but agreed with our view that it is not acceptable to expect the state to sanction and condone murder."

"I hope this latest decision will now draw a line once and for all under the legal debate and allow politicians, society as a whole, and health professionals to focus attention on how we care for the terminally ill, disabled and elderly."

Richard Hawkes

Richard Hawkes, chief executive of Scope, a charity for persons with disabilities stated:

"Why is it that when a able-bodied person wants to commit suicide we try to talk them out of it and offer them support, but when a disabled person wants to commit suicide we focus on how we can make that possible?"

The Court of Appeals decision in the UK is a good decision. 
It upheld the rule of law and it maintains the protections in law for every citizen in the UK, especially people who live with disabilities, chronic conditions, depression or mental illness.

Link to:
- Care Not Killing Alliance welcomes Court of Appeal rulings. 
- UK court rejects euthanasia cases, court gets it right.

CNK welcomes the Appeal Court rulings on the Nicklinson and Lamb cases but favours the dissenting opinion on 'Martin'

Media Release - July 30, 2013

Care Not Killing Alliance

Senior judges 'comprehensively and completely' reject challenge to murder law

Care Not Killing (CNK), the UK's leading anti-euthanasia campaign group, has welcomed today's decision by all three judges in the Appeal Court to comprehensively and completely reject the Nicklinson and Lamb cases.

However, it expressed concern about the 2-1 decision in the Martin case to seek further clarification of the DPP guidelines for so-called 'class two' cases relating to assisted suicide, requiring the involvement of a health professional.

Dr Andrew Fergusson

Dr Andrew Fergusson, a spokesman for CNK, said: 

"We welcome today's ruling by the Appeal Court on the Tony Nicklinson and Paul Lamb cases, in which CNK intervened. The judgment comprehensively and completely dismissed these appeals, which sought to alter legislation covering murder." 

"All three judges strongly rejected the notion that 'necessity' should be a defence in euthanasia cases, saying this was not compatible with English Law. Further, the blanket prohibition on assisted suicide in the UK is not contrary to Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights." 

"The judges, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, the Master of the Rolls, Lord Dyson and Lord Justice Elias, recognised that changing the laws on murder and suicide are matters for Parliament alone. They acknowledged that these issues had been debated by Parliament frequently in recent years." 

"And they confirmed the simple truth that the current law exists to protect the vulnerable and those without a voice: disabled people, terminally ill people and elderly people, who might otherwise feel pressured into ending their lives."

Dr Fergusson continued: 

"Two of the three judges concluded that the DPP should issue some very minor clarification to the prosecution guidelines covering assisted suicide for 'class two cases' requiring the involvement of a health professional. We were persuaded by the dissenting opinion from the UK's most senior judge that change was unnecessary and unhelpful, but, importantly, this clarification does not change the current law. 

"These latest court cases, along with previous cases and the numerous debates in Parliament confirm that there is a limit to choice in a democratic and tolerant society. The judges acknowledged these are three tragic cases but agreed with our view that it is not acceptable to expect the state to sanction and condone murder. 

"I hope this latest decision will now draw a line once and for all under the legal debate and allow politicians, society as a whole, and health professionals to focus attention on how we care for the terminally ill, disabled and elderly."

The UK police should be investigating the psychiatrist that Michael Irwin is protecting.

This article is written by Dr. Peter Saunders, the campaign director for the Care Not Killing Alliance in the UK. It was originally published on his blog.

By Peter Saunders - May 30, 2013

Michael Irwin

Peter Saunders

The papers are full of a report (initially carried by the Daily Mirror) about the first British man with dementia to have an assisted suicide at the Dignitas suicide clinic in Zurich, Switzerland.

The BBC is now running the story giving it even wider coverage but it has also been reported by the: Telegraph,  Independent and Daily Mail. I have personally been asked to comment by the BBC, Mirror, Times(£) and Telegraph.

This story (on which I originally commented in March) is in the news because Michael Irwin, who heads up the campaign group SOARS (Society for Old Age Rational Suicide),  gave an exclusive interview to the Daily Mirror reporting that an 83 year old man with early dementia had killed himself at Dignitas seven weeks ago. The Mirror then splashed it on their front page. Now other news outlets are playing catch up in the usual feeding frenzy.

Irwin claims to have ‘helped’ the (unnamed) man in question by referring him to a London psychiatrist (currently also unnamed) who provided him with a medical certificate to say that he was mentally competent enough to make an informed decision about being helped to kill himself.

Irwin believes that assisted suicide should be available to elderly people on demand and seems determined to make himself a martyr for the pro-euthanasia cause by progressively pushing the legal boundaries so this case was very helpful to his cause.

According to the Daily Mirror he now claims to have helped at least 25 people to die at Dignitas.

In 2005 the General Medical Council found him guilty of serious professional misconduct and struck him off the medical register after he admitted supplying sleeping pills to help a friend die although you will seldom see this reported.

Ever since, ironically and curiously, he seems to have escaped prosecution by virtue of the fact that he is no longer a registered medical practitioner. This is in spite of the fact that encouraging or assisting a suicide remains a crime carrying up to a 14 year prison sentence under the Suicide Act 1961.

This is because the Director of Public Prosecutions has decided that he hasn’t yet fulfilled his prosecution criteria. The problem this has created is that Irwin will go on annexing the Sudetenland until he provokes a reaction from the DPP or police because he sees that any reaction will give even more publicity to his cause.

However there is now a new twist to the tale. In deliberately concealing the identity of the London psychiatrist who issued the certificate of mental capacity to this patient Irwin may well now be obstructing the course of justice.

The Director of Public Prosecutions makes it clear that doctors acting in a professional capacity to assist a suicide are likely to be prosecuted and the General Medical Council (GMC) has warned that such doctors risk censure, including being struck off the medical register (see details of DPP and GMC guidelines here). 

That would seem to place the unnamed psychiatrist at risk of both being prosecuted and also losing his licence to practice.

So at very least it would seem that this case should be fully investigated by the police and the GMC.

However on past form I would expect that Irwin will make it extremely difficult for them. He has cleverly, with the media’s full cooperation, created an unsolved mystery that will run and run and ensure that he himself stays in the media spotlight.

The reason for this is that Irwin is actually a campaigner who craves publicity. So he will talk to the media when it suits him but will also withhold incriminating information when it best suits his cause. 

He is playing ‘catch me if you can’.

I suspect he would quite like to be prosecuted to give his cause even more of the oxygen of publicity and will continue to push the envelope more and more until he elicits a response.

Those selling newspapers are of course only too happy to oblige but in the process they risk fuelling more anxiety and suicide contagion amongst the worried well.

What we learn from Irwin is that pro-euthanasia campaigners will always push the boundaries. This is because once you accept the argument that there is such a thing as a life not worth living it is not possible to draft a law to encompass all who would like to fall within its remit without eventually opening it up to everyone.

The minute assisted suicide is allowed for anyone at all others will come using the same arguments of  compassion and autonomy with allegedly equally deserving cases that fall just outside the existing legal boundaries. And they will claim that in the interests of equality they should have access to it too.

And so we see in any jurisdiction where euthanasia or assisted suicide has been legalised that incremental extension steadily takes place (eg Oregon, Belgium, Netherlands).

First there is a year by year increase in numbers and then, accompanying this, a widening of the categories of people to be included.

First we have mentally competent, adults with less than six months to live (as Dignity in Dying and Lord Falconer are pushing for here). Then there are those who are ‘suffering unbearably’ (in mind or body) but not terminally ill; then minors who are judged capable of making up their own minds; then the mentally incompetent who ‘would have wanted it’ had they been able to say.

Irwin wants assisted suicide to be available not just for those who have early dementia, but for any elderly people who feel that their time has come.

The problem is that one cannot grant the legal right to assisted suicide to any group without at the same time removing legal protection from other similar people.

If the law ever were to change in this country vulnerable people would feel constrained to end their lives for fear of being a burden upon loved ones. Or alternatively loved ones would feel constrained to help their determined elderly relatives.  

This pressure would be felt with real intensity at this time of economic recession when many families are struggling to make ends meet.

Given the number of people and organisations who stand to gain financially from the deaths of elderly people it would be a certain recipe for personal and institutional elder abuse.

People with dementia and their families need the best possible care and support, not campaigns for the removal of their legal protection.

Our current law provides the right balance. On the one hand the penalties it holds in reserve act as a powerful deterrent to exploitation and abuse. On the other hand it gives discretion to prosecutors and judges in dealing with hard cases. It does not need changing.

The odd thing about this whole drama is why this 83 year old man, given his obvious mental capability, did not simply take his own life without requiring assistance.

But then, had he done that, it would not have been an international news story and would not have helped Michael Irwin’s campaign.

Psychiatrist in the UK needs to be investigated by the police

Psychiatrist who supplied report to man with dementia so he could kill himself at Dignitas needs to be investigated by the police.

Peter Saunders

By Peter Saunders, Care Not Killing UK - Campaign Director
March 17, 2013

The Sunday Times (£) reported that an 83 year old British man with dementia is to travel to Switzerland for an assisted suicide. If he does so he will become the first known Briton suffering from the condition to die at Dignitas, the Swiss suicide organisation.

The professional man, whose dementia is at an early stage, has apparently obtained a report from an (as yet unnamed) London psychiatrist that states he is ‘mentally competent’ to decide to end his life. 

He says he cannot face suffering more advanced dementia, nor the strain it will place on his loved ones.

Michael Irwin

Michael Irwin (pictured), a retired GP and co-ordinator of the ‘Society for Old Age Rational Suicide’ (SOARS), which campaigns for elderly people to have the legal right to have help to kill themselves, even if their medical conditions are not life-threatening, is helping the man with his travel arrangements and appears to be the source of the story.

Irwin argues that the elderly may prefer resources that would be spent on their healthcare to instead go to their grandchildren.

‘The desire to “stop being a burden” on one’s family, and to avoid squandering financial resources perhaps better spent on grandchildren’s further education, could become the final altruistic gesture… Part of what makes a patient’s suffering intolerable could be the realisation that it is . . . ruining other people’s lives. Then, a doctor assisted suicide could be a rational moral act.’

Irwin was previously head of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society (now euphemistically rebranded 'Dignity in Dying'(DID)). His new organisation SOARS uses the same arguments as DID but has a more radical agenda, believing that assisted suicide should be available for all elderly people, whether terminally ill or not.

Irwin was previously struck off the medical register by the General Medical Council in 2005 for trying to help a friend kill himself. He admitted obtaining sleeping pills to help his friend die and a GMC panel found him guilty of serious professional misconduct. 

He has since helped no less than nine people kill themselves, previously begging the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to put him away so that he could become a martyr for the pro-euthanasia movement. 

Irwin has curiously however not been prosecuted for any of these cases on the basis that he has not fulfilled the DPP’s criteria for a prosecution being in the public interest.

The DPP sets out these criteria in his ‘Policy for Prosecutors in Respect of Cases of Encouraging or Assisting Suicide’.

Assisting or encouraging a suicide is a criminal offence which potentially carries a custodial sentence of up to 14 years under the Suicide Act 1961. But prosecutions can only take place on the authority of the DPP. It is very important to note that since 2009, when the Act was amended, the offence of encouraging or assisting suicide can be committed even where a suicide or an attempt at suicide does not actually take place.

The DPP has to decide in a given case both that there is enough evidence to bring a prosecution and also that it is in the public interest to do so.

In establishing the latter he takes into consideration 16 factors tending towards prosecution and six factor sending against.

Irwin has escaped prosecution before under these criteria and it seems likely that he may do so again.

But the unnamed London psychiatrist who allegedly provided the report to say that this man with dementia is mentally competent enough to have assistance to kill himself in Switzerland is in a different position altogether.

The DPP guidance makes it clear that ‘a person who does not do anything other than provide information to another which sets out or explains the legal position in respect of the offence of encouraging or assisting suicide under section 2 of the Suicide Act 1961 does not commit an offence under that section.’

It was on this basis that the UK General Medical Council on 31 January this year advised that doctors ‘who provide access to a patient’s records where a subject access request has been made in accordance with the terms of the Data Protection Act 1998’ are unlikely to face scrutiny.

However this psychiatrist seems to have done more than that.

One of the DPP’s criteria that makes a prosecution more likely is that ‘the suspect was acting in his or her capacity as a medical doctor, nurse, other healthcare professional, a professional carer [whether for payment or not], or as a person in authority, such as a prison officer, and the victim was in his or her care.’

In line with this, the GMC, in its own 6-page guidance for pre-hearing investigators, makes it clear that censure, including being struck off the medical register, is probable when:

•the doctor’s encouragement or assistance depended upon the use of privileges conferred by a licence to practise medicine (such as prescribing) or took place in the context of a doctor-patient relationship•the doctor knew, or should reasonably have known, that their actions would encourage or assist suicide•the doctor acted with intent to encourage or assist suicide

It is also ‘likely’ when a doctor is:

•writing reports knowing, or having reasonable suspicion, that the reports will be used to enable the person to obtain encouragement or assistance in committing suicide

The police and the GMC both need to investigate this psychiatrist who, if the reports in the Sunday Times are correct, may well have committed the criminal offence of encouraging or assisting suicide even though the man in question has not yet travelled to Dignitas. 

As I told the Sunday Times earlier this week, we’ve seen in European countries that have legalised euthanasia that once you allow it in any circumstances at all you inevitably end up widening the category of people to be included.

This case shows that if we were to change the law in this country there would be pressure to apply it to dementia patients as is already happening in the Netherlands.

Our current law provides the right balance. On the one hand the penalties it holds in reserve act as a powerful deterrent to exploitation and abuse. On the other hand it gives some discretion to prosecutors and judges in dealing with borderline and hard cases. It does not need changing.

Any change in the law would inevitably place pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives for fear of being a burden upon loved ones and this pressure would be particularly intensely felt at this time of economic recession when many families are struggling to make ends meet.

Irish assisted suicide court case is based on flawed assumption

By Peter Saunders, Care Not Killing Campaign Director - March 1, 2013

Peter Saunders

Marie Fleming is a 59 year old former Irish lecturer who has multiple sclerosis and wants her partner to be able to help kill herself without risk of prosecution (See Irish Times and BBC Europe reports).

Her landmark case in Ireland is very similar to that of Debbie Purdy in Britain, who won a case in 2009 forcing the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to make public the criteria he used in deciding to bring a prosecution for assisting suicide. These criteria were published in February 2010 and have been the subject of some controversy.

Fleming has thus far, however, had far less success than Purdy.

What makes the Fleming case particularly interesting is that her partner who wishes to avoid prosecution is none other than Tom Curran, the Coordinator for Exit International Europe (EIE), a pro-euthanasia lobby group (EIE is part of Exit International, which is headed by controversial Australian euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke). 

Fleming’s case is currently before seven judges at the Irish Supreme Court, and although the hearing of evidence is expected to conclude on Tuesday, the judgement may not come out for some time.

Suicide was decriminalised in Ireland in 1993, but Section 2.2 of the Criminal Law Suicide Act 1993 makes it an offence to ‘aid, abet, counsel or procure’ a suicide. Those convicted under this law still face a custodial sentence of up to 14 years.

The Irish Act is almost identical to the Suicide Act 1961 of England and Wales, with the exception that in the latter the words ‘aid, abet, counsel or procure’ were amended to ‘encourage or assist’ by the Coroners and Justice Act in 2009 in an attempt to make it easier to secure convictions in cases of internet suicide promotion where the guilty party did not personally know the victim.

In her case against Ireland, the Attorney General and Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Fleming claims section 2.2 of the Criminal Law (Suicide) Act, which renders it an offence to aid, abet, counsel or procure the suicide of another, is unconstitutional on grounds that it breaches her personal autonomy rights under the Constitution and European Convention on Human Rights (See more here) 

Fleming argues that the absolute ban should and must be relaxed to meet her particular circumstances as a terminally ill person in severe pain who is mentally competent to decide when and how she wants to end her life but cannot do so without assistance. She is claiming that the law discriminates against her as a disabled person who needs assistance to kill herself. 

A three judge High Court ruled last month the absolute ban does not disproportionately infringe Ms Fleming's personal rights under the Constitution and is wholly justified in the public interest to protect vulnerable people.

The High Court also ruled that the Director of Public Prosecutions has no power to issue guidelines setting out what factors she would consider in deciding whether to prosecute cases of assisted suicide. However, the court was however ‘sure’ the Director would adopt a humane and sensitive approach to Ms Fleming's plight, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns said.

Ms Fleming is not appealing against that aspect of the court's decision. Her appeal focusses on arguments that the absolute ban on assisted suicide breaches her personal autonomy rights under the Constitution and European Convention on Human Rights and that, in her particular circumstances, this ban is not justified on public interest grounds but is disproportionate and discriminatory.

Fleming’s case rests on the flawed assumption that, since suicide itself is not illegal, there is thereby a right to suicide. It is on this basis that she claims that as a seriously disabled person she is being discriminated against for not being able to exercise that right, when able-bodied people can.

Dignity in Dying (the former British Voluntary Euthanasia Society) has used a similar line of argument.

However this is to misunderstand the basis and intention of the law.

When the British Parliament passed the Suicide Act in 1961 it was assured that the decriminalisation of suicide did not indicate any reduction of the seriousness with which either (a) suicide or (b) assisting suicide were viewed.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, moving the Suicide Bill's Third Reading, said:

'Because we have taken the view, as Parliament and the Government have taken, that the treatment of people who attempt to commit suicide should no longer be through the criminal courts, it in no way lessens, nor should it lessen, the respect for the sanctity of life which we all share. It must not be thought that because we are changing the method of treatment for those unfortunate people, we seek to depreciate the gravity of the action of anyone who tries to commit suicide…..' (Hansard: HC Deb 28 July 1961 vol 645: 1961(a): Cols 822-823)

He went on:

'I should like to state as solemnly as I can….that we wish to give no encouragement whatever to suicide…..I hope that nothing that I have said will give the impression that the act of self-murder, of self-destruction, is regarded at all lightly by the Home Office or the Government.' (Hansard:HC Deb 19 July 1961 vol 644: Cols 1425-1426)

Fleming and others wish to argue that in some cases suicide is not serious and is in fact a morally good course of action. That is a position that needs to be strongly resisted at all costs.

It is one thing to argue that people who attempt suicide should be treated with mercy and compassion by the courts. But it is quite another to argue that committing suicide, taking one’s own life, is a moral good and thereby a right.

That would be a very dangerous precedent indeed, which once established would be used as a legal lever for more and more incremental extension.

Daily Mail commentator tells us more about Anna Soubry, Britains newest junior health minister.

Anna Soubry

Daily Mail commentator, Melanie Phillips, wrote an incredibly insightful article about Anna Soubry, Britain's new junior health minister that is entitled: She's foul-mouthed and attention-seeking, but it's the new Health Minister's views on assisted suicide that are truly disturbing that was published in the UK Daily Mail today.

In the article Phillips points out that Soubry supports Cannabis, she likes to drink alot, she is "foul mouthed", and among many other things, she has admitted to flirting with a member of parliament from the other-side of the political spectrum.

Concerning the issue of assisted suicide, Phillips wrote:

Assisted suicide is deeply problematic because it opens up the near-certainty of abuse. 

That’s why Parliament has debated and dismissed it. 

Of course people are terrified of being trapped inside a useless body or suffering from a dreadful terminal disease. But no one has the right to expect another person to help someone kill themself. 

Suicide is not dying, and assisted suicide is not ‘helping someone to die’. It is assisting self-killing. 

The current law is necessarily nuanced and humane. It makes assisted suicide illegal because of the overwhelming necessity to protect vulnerable people from being put under pressure to end their lives. 

At the same time, as the Director of  Public Prosecutions has made clear, the law is not used to criminalise those who through wholly compassionate and disinterested motives assist people to kill themselves. 

Legalising assisted suicide would end such protection and turn doctors into death-dealers. Death can never be a therapeutic procedure. It can never be in society’s interests that medicine should be turned into a death service.

Link to the article.

UK MP challenges assisted suicide comment by the British Junior Health Minister

For those who follow the issue of euthanasia and assisted suicide, you would have noticed that Anna Soubry, the newly appointed Junior Minister for Health suggested that the assisted suicide law in the UK may need to be changed because of the number of British citizens who are dying at the Dignitas suicide clinic in Switzerland.

Nadine Dorries, the Conservative MP from Mid Bedfordshire in the UK responds, in an interesting and strong manner to challenge the remarks by Soubry but also to seek a clarification of the UK government official position.

Link to the original article. The article follows. 

Nadine Dorries

By Nadine Dorries - Daily Mail - September 9, 2012

You would think that the first job of a newly appointed Minister would be to spend time conquering their brief, and honing the arguments necessary to defend Government policy.

Not Anna Soubry, Minister for Health.

Within three days of her appointment, Soubry gave an interview proclaiming her support for a change in the law to allow assisted suicide to take place in the UK. That is, to legally facilitate someone asking a doctor to help them to take their own life, and for that doctor or individual to be free from prosecution for doing so.

She said: ‘I think it’s ridiculous and appalling that people have to go abroad to end their life instead of being able to end their life at home.’

In that one sentence, Ms Soubry displayed a profound ignorance of the vulnerable position many of the disabled, elderly and chronically sick would find themselves in should she get her way.

I am sure many people would have hoped that a new Health Minister would become familiar with cutting-edge palliative care concepts, such as the Liverpool Care Pathway.

The fact that in her first public utterance she prioritised enabling people to end their life is alarming.

Baroness Jane Campbell
Not Dead Yet - UK

If Soubry had taken a few days to do her homework, she would have realised that in recent years, assisted dying has been debated and rejected by Parliament multiple times and that only around one in five people die in their own home.

Every disability rights campaign group is vehemently opposed to legalising assisted suicide.

Coming as the Paralympics reach a glorious end, Soubry’s timing seems particularly insensitive.

In 2010, Keir Starmer, Director of Public Prosecutions, relaxed the law  in order to allow relatives to take loved ones abroad without fear of prosecution. Since then, the number of people wishing to travel and take their own life has not increased. So who is Soubry speaking for?

Today, there are many elderly and disabled people who sometimes feel they are a burden on those who care for them. However, they take comfort from knowing they are protected by the law.

The thought process of considering whether or not to ask a doctor to take their life is simply not facilitated.

It is not difficult to imagine, should euthanasia become legal, how abuse could occur. How people could be made to subtly feel as though they are an inconvenience or a burden.

For many, the next of kin is not even a person, but the State. A hospital or a care home. Not everyone has loving relatives to protect them. Some have not-so-loving relatives keen to inherit.

Many people are alone and depend on protection from the NHS. In a poor economic climate with rising NHS costs, the option to die could very quickly become a duty to die.

The British Medical Association debated and resoundingly rejected a change to the law and reaffirmed the position of doctors across the UK –that it is never right for a doctor to actively kill a patient, however sick or disabled – and they have done this for a number of reasons.

Doctors train to make people better, not kill. They are wary that under challenge, should a case to sue a  doctor come to court, the law may not fully protect them. Each case would be fraught with subjective argument.

Doctors simply do not want politicians to put them in a position of professional vulnerability and you would be hard pushed to find a doctor, unless his name was Harold Shipman, happy to administer a lethal cocktail.

The Liberal Democrat Conference will be debating and voting on a proposal to change the law in a way that would delight Soubry. The Lib Dems are the only political party to support euthanasia.

This makes Soubry’s announcement suspicious. It was breathtakingly audacious, and her position is at odds with most Conservative MPs. It is hard to believe that she made her proclamation in the media so quickly and in such a high profile way without support from No 10.

Is David Cameron using Soubry to endorse what he wishes to become Government policy? Soubry is a Health Minister. Ministers don’t do things by accident.

At this point, it is worth recalling former Lib Dem MP Evan Harris, who, like Soubry, ran endless pro-abortion and pro-euthanasia campaigns when he was in Parliament.

In 2005, Harris had an enormous majority of almost 8,000 in his Oxford seat. His voters showed what they thought of his views when they ejected him at the last Election.

Soubry had a majority of 389 two years ago. It is quite likely that at the next Election she will suffer the same fate as Evan Harris.

However, her comments have damaged the Conservative Party, not just her seat. The public distrust politicians with an unseemly interest in ending life, either of the unborn or the frail.

Ms Soubry was not the only new arrival at the Department of Health last week. Jeremy Hunt, who is a good and sincere man, was appointed as Health Secretary, her boss.

Next week, post Paralympics, I sincerely hope he will undo the damage Soubry has done by publicly denouncing her views and reassuring the sick, elderly, vulnerable and disabled that their lives are safe in his hands.

The call to legalise assisted suicide from the occasional patient, despite the media hype surrounding it, cannot be used to threaten the security of the vulnerable majority.