House of Lords closes on controversial note

Friday 31 July 2009 at 4:48 pm | In News | Post Comment
Supreme Court (House of Lords)
The House of Lords will be replaced by the Supreme Court

Supreme Court (House of Lords)

Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, must “promulgate” a policy stating in which circumstances he would prosecute in assisted dying cases, according to yesterday’s Law Lords’ ruling.

Debbie Purdy, 46, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, had asked the House of Lords to order prosecutors to say whether they would charge her husband if he took her to the Swiss clinic Dignitas.

The Lords ruled that the law on assisted suicide interferes with the right to respect a private life under the European Convention on Human Rights, their ruling was unanimous.

This does not open the gates to assisted suicide; it is possible that the prosecuting authorities will draw up guidelines to prosecute a family member who assists another as has been happening in increasing frequency

One of the most high-profile assisted suicide cases concerned the former BBC music conductor Edward Downes and his wife, Joan Downes who died together at the Dignitas clinic earlier this month.

Not one of the 115 people reported to have assisted people to kill themselves at Dignitas has been convicted of assisting a suicide.

The CPS has stated that an interim policy would be in place by the end of September, followed by a public consultation on permanent rules, which could be ready in the first half of next year.

The ruling was the last by the Law Lords who start their summer recess today. The House of Lords Judicial Committee will be replaced in October by the Supreme Court. Over 600 years of British history and tradition ended with the decision. The House of Lords has been operating as a court since 1399. Prior to that the full Parliament could weigh cases. While the House of Lords has kept separate judicial and legislative functions since 1876, the two were not physically divided.

No Comments yet »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

XHTML: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Powered by WordPress with Pool theme design by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds. Valid XHTML and CSS. ^Top^