A CHANGE in the law on euthanasia has been stymied by the imminent general election and a Lords committee split down the middle.

A report by the select committee set up to examine Lord Joffe’s Bill — which aimed to legalise assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia for those in the last months of a terminal illness — has concluded that there is no time for it in the present parliamentary session.But it called for a debate on the report and said that, if a similar Bill comes up in the next session, it should go straight to a committee of the whole House.

Supporters of euthanasia welcomed the conclusion. The Voluntary Euthanasia Society described it as “a momentous day for terminally ill patients who want greater choice”.

But Liz Sayce, of the Disability Rights Commission, said: “I am not surprised that the Lords committee didn’t reach a consensus. There is no social consensus in Britain on assisted dying and it would therefore be wrong to legislate on an area of such profound importance.”

Lord Mackay of Clashfern, who chaired the Lords committee, hinted yesterday that a Bill permitting assisted suicide — where the doctor provides a lethal prescription and the patient makes the choice over whether to take it — had a better choice of success than one that also legalises voluntary euthanasia, where the doctor is responsible for both prescribing and administering the fatal dose. Lord Joffe’s Bill would have made both procedures legal, subject to stringent conditions. The patient would have to be terminally ill, mentally competent and suffering “unbearably”. If assisted suicide and voluntary euth-anasia were treated separately, Parliament would have the option of choosing one, both, or neither. The report estimates that, were assisted suicide to be legal in Britain, it might involve about 650 deaths a year. Voluntary euthanasia might involve as many as 13,000 deaths, if the law in the Netherlands is a guide. In fact, the figures would be lower if the Bill applied only to England and Wales, as Lord Joffe has proposed.

The committee also said that the qualifying conditions for either procedure needed to be expressed in clinical rather than emotional terms — as “unrelievable” rather than “unbearable” suffering, for example.

Lord Mackay, a former Lord Chancellor, said: “Opinion within the committee has been divided. Our report is intended to inform debate and to improve understanding of this complex and emotive subject.”

Peers heard from more than 140 witnesses in four countries, considered more than 60 formal written submissions and received in excess of 14,000 letters and e-mails.

“It is clear to us from the evidence we have received that the demand for assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia is particularly strong among determined individuals whose suffering derives more from the fact of their terminal illness than from its symptoms and who are unlikely to be deflected by more or better palliative care from their wish to end their lives,” the report says.

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, a Professor of Palliative Medicine at the University of Wales College of Medicine, rejected a claim by the Voluntary Euthanasia Society that the report was a green light for a change in law.

“The more we heard, the more concerned I became,” she said. “To make killing a therapeutic option is crossing a Rubicon. So much depends on the quality of palliative care — if it is poor, patients are thrown into despair, but if it is good, they are empowered and can have a good quality of life.”

RIGHT TO DIE

Polls commissioned

by the Voluntary Euthanasia Society in 2002 and 2004 found that 80 per cent supported medical help to die for those with a terminal illness

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