British families who help terminally ill loved ones to go to Switzerland to die may now be free from the threat of police action, according to Dame Esther Rantzen.
The vote by MPs in favour of assisted dying is likely to make it impossible for police to carry out the existing legal ban on ‘assisted suicides,’ said the TV broadcaster, who has stage four cancer.
Assisted dying campaigner Dame Esther, who hailed the “extraordinary” Commons decision, says she may now decide to take her family with her to Switzerland if her condition deteriorates – and defy the law.
She told BBC Radio Four: “Since there has been this vote I am wondering whether it means I can say to my family ‘come with me to Switzerland, say goodbye to me there’. Because when they come home again I’m not sure they would be investigated for assisting my suicide.”
The proposed new law would probably not take effect in Britain soon enough to allow her to have an assisted death in the UK itself, said Ms Rantzen.
However, it could mean she could: “say to my nearest and dearest: ‘come with me (to Dignitas in Switzerland) and we will buy a cuckoo clock and a box of chocolates and we will enjoy my assisted death.’”
Her comments suggest that although any law allowing assisted dying in Britain is not expected for at least two years, she believes that in practice it could remove the threat of legal action against Britons who go to Dignitas for an assisted death.
In other words, from now on police and courts could be powerless to enforce the law because MPs had already voted to scrap it.
Under the 1961 Suicide Act it is an offence to take part in an act ‘capable of encouraging or assisting suicide’, according to the Crown Prosecution Service.
Between 2009 and 2024 a total of 187 such cases have been investigated by police. There have been four successful prosecutions and six cases are ongoing.
Although the statistics suggest few families are punished for helping terminally ill loved ones who go to Dignitas in Switzerland to die, campaigners say many others are reluctant to do so when they know they are breaking the law.