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Assisted Suicide

Controversial plans to allow doctors to help patients to commit suicide were debated by peers last night. A proposed new law would allow a competent adult to request medical assistance to die.

Crossbench peer, Lord Joffe, said that tens of thousands of extremely ill patients were already being illegally helped to die by their doctors every year. His Patient (Assisted Dying) Bill would simply be legalising the practice. "Without it," he said, "more and more people would go abroad to die.

The issue was highlighted recently by the case of 'suicide tourist' Reginald Crews, 74, from Liverpool. He was crippled by motor neurone disease and flew to Switzerland where a doctor helped him to die.

Lord Joffe said that 80% of the public backed the idea of assisted suicide. But the Bishop of Oxford, Rt. Rev. Richard Harries, said, "To change the law in this way would make elderly, sick and other vulnerable people even more vulnerable and it would totally change the relationship between physician and patient."

Even if the Bill is passed in the Lords, it has little chance of getting through the Commons without Government backing.