Brown against changes to assisted suicide law

|PIC1|Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Tuesday he was “totally against” any change to the law on euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Mr Brown made the comments in a radio interview with the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor for the BBC.

In the interview, the Prime Minister said, “Well, I'm totally against laws on that. I think this debate about assisted suicide, it's not really for us to create any legislation that would put pressure on people to feel that they had to offer themselves because they were causing trouble to a relative. So I think we have got to make it absolutely clear that the importance of human life is recognised."

Aiding and abetting a suicide is illegal in the UK and anyone convicted of the crime could face a 14-year prison sentence, but several high profile cases have prompted fresh calls for a change to the current law.

In England, the Director of Public Prosecutions decided not to charge the parents of 23-year-old tetraplegic Daniel James after they accompanied their son to the Dignitas clinic in Zurich to commit suicide. Nor have charges been brought against other Britons who have assisted in the suicide of a relative.

Debbie Purdy, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, failed in her High Court bid for clarification on whether her husband would be convicted on his return to the UK if he accompanied her to Dignitas to die.

North of the border, independent MSP and Parkinson’s sufferer Margo MacDonald has stated her intention to bring a bill before the Scottish Parliament in 2009 that would make assisted suicide legal in Scotland.

Dignity in Dying is pushing for the legalisation of assisted suicide with safeguards. The group’s head of campaigns, James Harris, was quoted by the BBC as saying that the decision of when to end a dying adult’s suffering “should be a decision for the dying adult themselves”.