Right-to-die campaigner attacks PM on suicide

Right-to-die campaigner Debbie Purdy criticised Gordon Brown last night for showing a "lack of respect" to the British people after the Prime Minister warned against legalising assisted suicide.

Mr Brown said changing the law would run the risk of putting vulnerable people under pressure to end their lives and result in an erosion of trust in the caring professions.

But Ms Purdy, from Bradford, said she believed changing the law would allow more open discussion, meaning patients will not feel abandoned and lives would be saved.

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Mr Brown’s comments came as Keir Starmer QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, prepared to publish full guidance tomorrow on when prosecutions for assisted suicide should be brought.

Mr Starmer was forced to act by a House of Lords judgment in the case of Ms Purdy, a multiple sclerosis sufferer who wanted to know if her husband would be prosecuted for helping her to end her life at a Swiss clinic.

The Prime Minister said: “Let us be clear: death as an option and an entitlement, via whatever bureaucratic processes a change in the law on assisted suicide might devise, would fundamentally change the way we think about death.

“The risk of pressures – however subtle – on the frail and the vulnerable, who may for example feel their existences burdensome to others, cannot ever be entirely excluded.”

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Ms Purdy said Mr Brown was effectively trying to stop people who might be considering ending their lives from talking openly about their situation.

She suggested he was giving his personal religiously-informed view rather than speaking as a representative of the British people.