DPP encouraging breach of suicide law, say Catholic bishops
Roman Catholic bishops yesterday accused Britain’s chief prosecutor of encouraging people to break the country’s suicide laws.
They said Keir Starmer QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, was creating categories of people whose lives would be legally considered less worthy of protection than the rest of society.
They said his ‘interim policy for prosecutors’ in cases of assisted suicide stigmatised the disabled, the terminally-ill, the depressed and the aged and said it could send out the message that it was acceptable to help such people to kill themselves.
They accused Mr Starmer of exceeding his powers by ignoring the will of Parliament, which has repeatedly rejected attempts to change the law on assisted suicide and euthanasia.
The interim policy for prosecutors, published in September, set out the circumstances in which a prosecution under the 1961 Suicide Act is likely or unlikely.
Under the guidance, someone assisting in a suicide is likely to face prosecution if the person killed is under the age of 18 years, had a mental illness or was in good physical health.
It says a criminal action is unlikely to be brought if the person killed had a grave illness or disability, was determined to kill themselves and was a close friend or relative of a helper who was motivated by compassion.
In a submission to the public consultation on the policy, the bishops said: ‘Given the clear view that Parliament has expressed on the issue, the inclusion in the guidance of the categories of terminal and degenerative illness and incurable disability as conditions that weigh against prosecution oversteps the role of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
‘The inclusion of certain categories of victim – such as persons with disability – and certain categories of relationship, such as a spouse or unpaid carer, as weighing against prosecution is highly misleading and could encourage criminal behaviour.
‘They are categories irrelevant to weighing up public interest in prosecution and they give the impression of a change in the law outside of and in contradiction to the recent explicit expression of the will of Parliament.’
Mr Starmer was ordered to produce the guidance following a July ruling in the House of Lords in a case brought by Debbie Purdy, a multiple sclerosis sufferer.
Miss Purdy demanded to know if her husband would be prosecuted if he helped her to travel to the Dignitas euthanasia clinic in Switzerland to commit suicide.
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