No plans to review laws on right to die, insists Justice Secretary

MINISTERS will refuse to consult or issue a call for evidence on weakening assisted suicide laws in a boost for MPs who do not want a change to the law.

Robert Buckland, the Justice Secretary, who is in charge of the policy, has made it clear that the Government will not do any work on legalising euthanasia.

The news comes after The Sunday Telegraph revealed that Health Secretary Matt Hancock wrote to the chief statistician of the Office for National Statistics to ask for figures on how many people with terminal illnesses are killing themselves every year, in a move that was seen as opening the door to legalising assisted suicide.

However, a senior source at the Ministry of Justice said: “We have no plans to consult or call for evidence or anything on this issue.”

Instead, ministers want to allow MPs to have a free vote on the issue, and then use that to guide the Government on whether legislation should be drawn up.

The same source said: “It is a matter for Parliament. This is an issue for MPs and their consciences and members of the Lords to vote upon accordingly.”

Mr Buckland is understood to believe that the guidance issued by the CPS in 2010 “strikes the right balance”.

The source added: “You don’t see loving couples ending with the surviving member going to court. That doesn’t happen. We don’t choose to be born, we don’t choose the time of death – and once you start ascribing value to somebody’s life you are taking things into a new dimension.”

Previous attempts by MPs and peers have failed to win the support of Parliament. In 2014, the then-prime minister David Cameron said he was “not convinced that further steps need to be taken” and was concerned that “people might be being pushed into things they don’t actually want for themselves”.

Last month, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Dying Well wrote to Mr Buckland urging him not to weaken the law. Tory MP Danny Kruger, the group’s chairman, said: “Instead of legalising assisted suicide, we should be investing in a proper system of palliative care.”

However Andrew Mitchell, the former Conservative minister who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Choice at the End of Life, said: “The ONS figures will show that large numbers of people who are killing themselves are terminally sick.

“They cannot afford to go to Switzerland and therefore determine they have no option but to end their lives themselves. It is for us as members of the House of Commons to decide and vote on what is an issue of conscience.”

‘You don’t see loving couples ending with the surviving member going to court. That doesn’t happen’