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Assisted Suicide

I firmly believe that assisting in suicide is wrong and should be a criminal offence, but, as with all criminal offences, the DPP or the prosecution service must always have the discretion to apply a degree of common sense and make judgments about what motivated the person concerned to commit that criminal offence. Since the guidelines were issued two years ago, the DPP has made a sensible judgment in every case. Where he has been satisfied that the crime was motivated by compassion, no prosecution has taken place. The system is working well. It is delivering exactly what we want in law; it supports what this Parliament has judged we should have in law. If we were to put things on a statutory basis, we would damage the current law, which is working so well, and it would result in pressure being put on some of the most vulnerable people in society, which would be plain wrong. Finally, I want to say something about palliative care. For decades, all Governments have spent a huge amount of money on extending life and curing disease. We have not spent nearly enough time ensuring that that extended life is a life of quality.