[...] the Panel was persuaded that the law in Canada [...] should be changed to allow some form of assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia. Putting the philosophical analysis together with the lessons learned from [a] review of the paths taken in other jurisdictions that have moved to more permissive regimes, the Panel considered the options for the design of a permissive regime and suggests the following legal mechanisms for achieving the reform and the core elements of the proposed reform.
Lord Falconer's Assisted Dying Bill [HL Bill 24] is the fourth of its kind to come before the House of Lords in the last ten years. None of its predecessors has made progress and the last one (Lord Joffe's Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill) was rejected in May 2006. This latest bill is little different from Lord Joffe's - it seeks to license doctors to supply lethal drugs to terminally ill patients to enable them to end their lives. The bill contains no safeguards, beyond stating eligibility criteria, to govern the assessment of requests for assisted suicide. It relegates important questions such as how mental capacity and clear and settled intent are to be established to codes of practice to be drawn up after an assisted suicide law has been approved by Parliament. This is wholly inadequate for a bill, such as this, with life-or-death consequences. Parliament cannot responsibly be asked to approve such a radical piece of legislation without seeing the nature of the safegua...