There can be no better evidence of the urgent need to change the law on assisted dying than the ruling made yesterday by the High Court on the case of Debbie Purdy.

Ms Purdy, a woman suffering from multiple sclerosis, brought a case to clarify the law on assisted suicide. She wanted to ensure that if she travelled with her husband to a Swiss clinic to end her life, he would not be prosecuted on his return to Britain.

The law as it stands means that if her husband does accompany her he may be prosecuted if the Director of Public Prosecutions decides that there is sufficient evidence and it is in the public's interest to do so. But so far there have been no prosecutions of the relatives of the 101 British citizens who have gone to the Dignitas clinic.

The judges said that although they have every sympathy with Ms Purdy they cannot help her to clarify the law. The courts can give her no guidance even if it means that she will have to take her life earlier than she would wish, while she is still healthy enough to travel alone to Switzerland. What a terrible dilemma for Ms Purdy and her husband that this should be the law.

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BACKGROUND

• GP ‘told patients he supported euthanasia’

• Man spared jail for suffocating sick wife

• Doctor is cleared of hastening deaths of babies

• Husband who helped wife die found guilty

BACKGROUND

• Swiss clinic has helped 100 Britons to die

• MPs must rule on assisted suicide

• Britain lags in legal assisted suicide

• The right to dignity

It is not only Ms Purdy who faces this dilemma. There are many others who feel that travelling abroad to die is a gentler way of death than the choices that are available in Britain, but who cannot do so for financial reasons or the sheer physical impossibility of their making an arduous journey.

The only other legal option is to commit suicide. But a botched suicide attempt increases the suffering of already sick people. There are also mercy killings and some doctors do illegally assist their patients to die out of compassion, but they do so at great risk to their careers and, in some cases, their freedom.

The solution is clearly a change in the law to allow mentally competent, terminally ill adults the option to end their life in their own home with the assistance of their caring doctors. This is what the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill that we introduced in the House of Lords in 2005 would have achieved. In drafting the Bill we recognised that we had a duty not only to allow terminally ill people to make their own decisions about their own lives, but we also had a duty to protect vulnerable people.

This required that we included an array of safeguards before the patient made a final decision. The process, as the Bill envisaged it, would begin with a written request to his or her doctor for assistance to die. Thereafter the patient would have to undergo a consultation with two doctors, one of whom must be an independent consultant.

If either of the doctors had concerns about the patient's mental competence he or she would be referred to a psychiatrist. There would also be a minimum period of 14 days for reflection. And recognising the importance of palliative care, the patient would also have to consult a palliative care specialist.

It was only after all these and other safeguards were met that patients could make a final written request to a doctor willing to prescribe medication to end their life. The patient - not the doctor - would administer the drugs.

The Bill was based on the law in Oregon in the United States, where assisted dying has been lawful for ten years and where there has been no credible evidence of abuse. The Bill included more safeguards than the Oregon legislation.

Why then was there such opposition to assisted dying? The answer is that a small minority of the population - probably under 20 per cent - largely under the influence of their religious leaders, sought to impose their beliefs on the 80 per cent of the population who supported assisted dying and who did not share their beliefs.

The Bill did not in any way seek to interfere with the rights of any of this small minority to die in any way they choose, nor did it seek to encourage any of the majority to ask for assistance to die. It simply aimed to provide an additional end-of-life option to the existing choices - chiefly of palliative care, but also of refusing medical treatment or of patients starving themselves to death.

The leading article in The Times last Saturday was in tune with public opinion when it called for the Bill to have another reading. When a new Bill is introduced I hope the debate will not abound with misleading and emotive buzz phrases such as “care not killing”, or references to the Holocaust or the religious objections of the minority. Rather, I hope that it will be a calm, rational debate that focuses on the safeguards necessary to protect the vulnerable, and the need to ensure that every mentally competent terminally ill person has a right to die at a time and in a way he or she chooses.

Sadly, however, the last thing the opponents of assisted dying seem to want is a debate. This was shown by their conduct at the last hearing of my Bill when they broke a longstanding tradition in the Lords of never opposing a Private Member's Bill at second reading. They succeeding in summarily bringing the debate to an end before a detailed examination of its provisions could even take place.

This week Sir Ken Macdonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions, stated that if this issue is to be resolved it should be done so by Parliament. This was echoed in yesterday's judgment. In the words of Lord Justice Scott Baker and Mr Justice Aikens: “The offence of assisted suicide is very widely drawn to cover all manner of different circumstance; only Parliament can change it.”

I respectfully agree. Opinion polls consistently show that the overwhelming majority of the public support change. For the law to change the voices of the silent majority must be heard. We should all draw courage from Debbie Purdy.

Lord Joffe is a human rights lawyer

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