Falconer commission's loaded agenda

Sunil Peck

In Disability Now last month, Lord Falconer, who chairs the Commission on Assisted Dying, talked about what he saw as the need to clarify the law on assisted suicide.

As the law stands, although it’s currently an offence in English law to help someone to die, a person may not be prosecuted for doing so.

Kevin Fitzpatrick (pictured), a member of the Not Dead Yet UK campaign, disagrees.

He thinks there’s no need to change the law on assisted suicide because it both provides safe­guards for disabled people whose lives might otherwise be at risk, and allows people who want to choose to end their lives to do so.

Fitzpatrick dismisses the idea that changing the law would eliminate the need for people to travel to Swiss clinics like Dignitas to die, and that it would remove the threat of prosecution from those who help them to do so.

People don’t need a law change to discourage them from using Dignitas, he explains. “They already have the choice to die legally at home in this country. They can refuse treatment or ask for it to be withdrawn and to be kept comfortable.”

It’s important, says Fitzpatrick, that individual cases of people going to Switzerland to die should not be used to promote the cause of changing the law.

“If we stay silent on individuals’ choices it’s not because we don’t feel those issues very keenly: we do, of course, [but] there’s a big difference between the compassion we all feel for individuals and a general change in the law. Not Dead Yet opposes the idea that there should be a change in the law.”

Although there’s a debate around the issues involved with assisted suicide, the Commission on Assisted Dying has no legitimacy to lead it, according to Fitzpatrick, because its neutrality is in question.

The Commission is partly funded by the author Terry Pratchett, who has campaigned to legalise assisted suicide. Lord Falconer, its chair, is an advocate of assisted suicide. And the majority of its members are also known to favour assisted suicide.

“What they’re doing, it seems to me, is searching for an evidence base to support their argument that there should be a change in the law,” says Fitzpatrick.

For this reason, Not Dead Yet says that it will refuse any invitation to give evidence to the inquiry, if invited to do so.

“We do not want to do anything that gives credibility to a one-sided and loaded special interest group,” he explains. This raises the question of how, in that case, Not Dead Yet wishes to contribute to the debate.

“The ideal position is that everyone who is afraid of suffering at the end of their lives should have that fear removed. They should have clear unequivocal access to the support services they need to convince them that they will be made comfortable throughout the process.

“What we now have is a fear of suffering, and this won’t improve with a change to the law. If the law does change, the lives of disabled people will be put at more risk.”

To stress the point, he adds: “We already have safeguards in place. In recent court cases, a mother [who had helped her daughter to die] didn’t go to prison because it was clear that she had done everything to convince her daughter not to want to be helped to take her life.

“In another case, another mother who was implicated in inflicting damage on her son did go to prison.

“The law currently protects not just disabled people but everyone from that kind of harm from family members, carers, including health professionals and anyone else who has a mind to commit euthanasia.

“That protection must be reinforced, not removed at a legislative stroke.”