What does Richard and Judy's death pact mean for the debate on assisted dying?
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Version 0 of 1. "If Judy was really ill and in logical mind, I wouldn't give a tuppenny if there was a risk of being prosecuted. I'd do what was right for my wife," Richard Madeley told the Daily Telegraph earlier this week, to which Judy Finnigan added: "And I'd do the same. Stuff it all! We've made ourselves give each other a pledge along those lines." Thus Richard and Judy, British household names famous for their daytime chatshow, their book club and, to a lesser extent, her novel, announced their suicide pact. The revelation outraged Care Not Killing spokesman Alistair Thompson, who said: "This is another deeply depressing and misguided set of comments from two much-loved celebrities, who should know better." Steady on, Alistair: you can say what you want about the ethics of euthanasia, but "much loved"? Thompson went on: "Before making similar comments, I hope that Richard and Judy might investigate more thoroughly the amazing quality of palliative care we have in this country and visit one or more of the UK's outstanding hospices." Hospices? Richard had other ideas. "If, when the time came," Richard said, "Judy said to me, 'But what about you? What about the risk of prosecution?', I'd say: 'That's my problem, I'll deal with that, don't worry about it.' And for me, it would be the locked room, the bottle of whisky and the revolver. I wouldn't want to mess around." Their decision opens anew an old debate. Assisting a suicide is a criminal offence in England and Wales under the 1961 Suicide Act and carries a maximum sentence of 14 years. But in 2010 guidelines, the then director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, said action against friends or relatives who assisted out of compassion, not for personal gain, would be unlikely. In January, it was revealed at an inquest into the suicide pact of an elderly couple from Newbury that the Crown Prosecution Service had decided it wasn't in the public interest to prosecute their daughter for helping them take their lives. In the same week, 9.7 million British viewers watched Hayley Cropper take her own life on Coronation Street rather than continuing to suffer with cancer, and despite the objections of her husband Roy. The storyline prompted complaints from anti-suicide groups about the risk of copycat suicides. "The idea that it will promote copycat suicides pisses me off more than anything," Julie Hesmondhalgh, who played Hayley and is a member of the British Humanist Association, which supports attempts to legalise assisted dying, assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia, told me at the time. "Hundreds of murders are shown every day on TV and nobody's saying that normalises murder." One reason anti-suicide groups find Richard and Judy's announcement so exasperating is that it comes as members of the House of Lords are to debate Lord Falconer's assisted dying bill, which would allow doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to terminally ill patients. Earlier this month, the Apostolic Nuncio to Great Britain, Archbishop Antonio Mennini, condemned Falconer's proposal as an attack on "human life as a gift from God". Richard and Judy, it seems, don't see it quite that way. |