Yahoo News Starmer may allow free vote on assisted dying to end ‘injustice’
Sir Keir Starmer wants to end the “injustice” of the ban on assisted dying and may allow a free vote if Labour wins the election.
The Labour leader voted in favour of allowing doctors to help people to die the last time the issue was debated in the Commons in 2015, saying the existing system was an “injustice”. He said: “The law needs to be changed. The important thing is to have safeguards.”
And when Sir Keir was director of public prosecutions, he published guidance making it less likely that people would be prosecuted for helping someone to die.
On Wednesday, a Labour spokeswoman said Sir Keir had not changed his view on assisted dying since then.
She said that if there were to be any change in the law, it would be brought forward by a backbencher in a private member’s Bill. However, she said it was too early to plan for any legislative time to be set aside.
It comes just days after the assisted dying issue was brought to the fore again by Dame Esther Rantzen, 83, who has cancer, and has revealed she has joined Dignitas in case she needs to end her life.
Joan Bakewell, the television presenter, responded by saying she believed people should be able to end their lives in the way of their choosing.
When assisted dying came before the Commons in 2015, it was heavily defeated. MPs voted 330 to 118 against a private member’s Bill to help terminally ill people end their lives – but one of those to speak in favour was Sir Keir, who had just been elected to Parliament.
Paralysed rugby player
He talked about how when he was director of public prosecutions, he had been confronted with the case of a mother and father of a rugby player, Dan James, who was paralysed after an accident on the pitch.
Mr James did not want to die alone and his parents travelled with him to Dignitas in Switzerland, where he died aged 23.
When they came back, the parents were arrested and interviewed, and Sir Keir had to decide whether they would be prosecuted.
“I decided that they should not be prosecuted,” he said. “I took it to be the compassionate act of a loved one, and using the exercise that the DPP had, decided not to prosecute.”
Sir Keir also spoke about a multiple sclerosis sufferer called Debbie Purdy, who took him to court to force him to publish guidance on which assisted suicide cases would be prosecuted and which would not.
He said the principles underpinning his guidance were that “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”.
‘Very strong safeguards’
Sir Keir added that he also believed there should be very strong safeguards to protect those who might be pressured to end their lives. His guidance also said doctors or other professionals would be more likely to be prosecuted than other people.
The new guidelines came into force in 2010, and Sir Keir told MPs that over the next five years he ordered that no prosecution be brought in 79 of the 80 cases brought before him.
“I understand those who say that we should revert to a position where nobody should be given any assistance at all,” he told the Commons.
“But we have arrived at a position where compassionate, amateur assistance from nearest and dearest is accepted but professional medical assistance is not, unless someone has the means and physical assistance to get to Dignitas.
“That to my mind is an injustice that we have trapped within our current arrangement.”
At the time, he told The Times: “The law needs to be changed. The important thing is to have safeguards.”
He said there needed to be a balance between allowing people with a “voluntary, clear, settled and informed wish to die to be assisted by someone acting out of compassion” and protecting vulnerable people being pressured into killing themselves.
“Do we keep something there to protect the vulnerable and ignore the plight of those actively committing suicide or being assisted to attempt suicide, or move to a different position where there are strong safeguards?” Sir Keir added.
