Last week the Scottish Parliament voted against a reform in the law on assisted dying by defeating Margo MacDonald’s Bill. Coincidentally in the same week came news of the launch of an independent inquiry into assisted dying in the UK.

The Commission on Assisted Dying, chaired by the former lord chancellor Lord Falconer, will review evidence from experts and the public and consider what system, if any, should exist to allow people to be assisted to die and whether any changes in the law should be introduced. The commission has been set up with funding provided by the author Terry Pratchett, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, and businessman Bernard Lewis. On their behalf Dignity in Dying has made the arrangements for its formation, and Demos will act as Secretariat, providing administrative and research support.

At the launch Lord Falconer said: “The purpose of the commission is to hear evidence, consider all the relevant material and then to write and report, addressing the issue of whether there needs to be a change of approach to the issue of assisted dying, and making recommendations as to what, if any, changes of the law and practice should be implemented.” The former Metropolitan police commissioner Lord Blair, a member of the Commission, said: “The legal and ethical questions surrounding assisting the already terminally ill or those with catastrophic injuries to choose the manner and timing of their deaths make the investigation of such deaths very difficult for the police and the families involved but the issues go far wider and have implications for all of us and the kind of society we wish to create.” The Commission, which will run from 30 November 2010 to September 2011, with a report launched in October 2011, has issued a public call for evidence and will publish all evidence submitted on its website.

The new Commission has had a mixed reception. Sarah Wootton, Chief Executive of Dignity in Dying said: “It is important that serious minds from different disciplines and perspectives give thought to the mechanisms of an assisted dying law; one of the most important social issues of our time.  No one wants people to suffer unnecessarily and against their wishes at the end of their lives, and of equal importance, no one wants potentially vulnerable people to be at risk of harm under new legislation.” The head of public affairs for the British Humanist Association, Naomi Phillips, said: “Earlier this year the BHA joined calls for an independent inquiry into assisted dying, to examine the evidence relating to a change in the law, to help towards evidence-based policy making on this sensitive issue. We very much welcome the launch of a new Commission and inquiry into assisted dying.”

But Richard Hawkes, chief executive of the disability charity Scope, said: “We are deeply concerned that this pseudo ‘Commission’ will not reflect the concerns and fears of many disabled people” and questioned how independent it really can be. Baroness Campbell, a leading disabled campaigner against legalising assisted suicide, shared this concern, and added: “If the commissioners and funders are heavily weighted towards those who support assisted suicide then the manner with which they will look at the evidence will be seen through this prism.” She said that she was keen to discover whether the commission would involve “knowledgeable disabled people with the experience of severe impairment.” Dr Peter Saunders, Director of the pro-life campaign group Care not Killing, said: “The fact that an ‘independent’ commission on ‘assisted dying’ is to be chaired by a peer who just last year tried to relax the law on assisted suicide, is being funded by a celebrity novelist who is passionately pushing for a change in the law and was dreamt up by a leading campaign group will certainly raise eyebrows.”

Anyone wishing to obtain the consultation document and/or contribute to the debate is invited to contact the Commission at:
http://commissiononassisteddying.co.uk/

The Coroners and Justice Act 2009 has cropped up in these blogs several times before. This grab-bag of an Act covers a wide range of subjects. Apart from coroners and inquests, it deals with murder, indecent photographs, anonymity of witnesses, live links to court, confiscation orders, legal aid, criminal memoirs, and many other matters.

The latest section to be implemented is s.59, which deals with encouraging or assisting suicide. Previously, s.2 of the Suicide Act 1961 comprised two offences. This amendment replaces the substantive offence of aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring suicide, and the separate offence of attempting to commit the section 2 offence, with a single offence. The purpose of these changes is to “improve public understanding of the law in this area; and make clear that the law applies to online actions in exactly the same way as it does offline”. In line with the Law Commission’s recommendation, s.59 also replaces the “old-fashioned language” with what the Ministry of Justice considers “the more modern – and equivalent – terms of encouraging or assisting which should make it easier for people to understand the sort of behaviour that the law prohibits”. The scope of the law remains the same, so these changes, which came into effect on 1 February, do not make liable to prosecution anyone who was not liable before.

The subject of assisted suicide is rarely out of the headlines. In recent weeks one devoted mother who helped her sick daughter to end her life with tablets and morphine walked free from court with a suspended sentence. Another was jailed for murder, to serve a minimum of nine years, after injecting her brain-damaged son with a lethal dose of heroin. Both involved a loving parent who could not bear to see a child suffer. But there were key differences. Frances Inglis’s son had never indicated an intention to die. His mother believed him to be in pain and could not accept an encouraging medical prognosis. Kay Gilderdale’s daughter had contemplated going to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. When a first attempt at suicide failed, her mother helped her to end her life. These cases highlight the acute difficulties for prosecutors, judges and juries alike, and add to the pressure for greater clarity in the law.

In his moving and funny Richard Dimbleby lecture the other week, author Terry Pratchett, who has Alzheimer’s disease, made a plea for a common-sense solution. He proposed “some kind of strictly non-­aggressive tribunal that would establish the facts of the case well before the assisted death takes place. The members of the tribunal would be acting for the good of society as well as that of the applicant – horrible word – to ensure they are of sound and informed mind, firm in their purpose, suffering from a life-threatening and incurable disease and not under the ­influence of a third party”. Death, as a character, ­appeared in the first of his splendid Discworld novels, and he said that “he has evolved in the series to be one of its most popular characters; implacable, because that is his job, he appears to have some sneaking regard and compassion for a race of creatures which are to him as ephemeral as mayflies, but which nevertheless spend their brief lives making rules for the universe and counting the stars”. But death always has the last word.

The full text of  MoJ Circular 2010/03, implementing s.59, can be found at: http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/docs/circular-03-2010-assisting-encouraging-suicide.pdf