The Director of Public Prosecutions and the Lord Chief Justice have recently gone as far as they can to clarify the law on assisted suicide in the absence of new legislation.

Last month, Debbie Purdy, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, lost her Court of Appeal attempt to secure a statement from the DPP to set out in what circumstances he would prosecute those who helped others to travel abroad to die.

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, said that although he could not give her the kind of guidance that she was seeking, the courts were prepared in some instances to throw out prosecutions.

He said that there were “broad circumstances” in which aiding and abetting suicide would not be prosecuted, adding that even if a case went ahead, the courts had the power not to impose any “penal sanction” if they felt that it was not justified.

Yet Britain’s most senior judge insisted that there could be no further judicial clarification of the law. That was not the courts’ role, he said. “The proper forum for that discussion is Parliament.”

The Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, QC, issued a detailed ten-page explanation last December of why he did not intend to prosecute the parents of Daniel James, below, a paralysed rugby player, who committed suicide at a clinic in Switzerland.

Mark and Julie James had made payments to the clinic, Dignitas, sent documents and made travel arrangements to take their son there.

Mr Starmer said that there was sufficient evidence for a prosecution but ruled one out on public interest grounds. He insisted that he had not intended to give the “green light” to assisted suicide, nor that he was stating that he would never prosecute them. That particular case, he emphasised, turned on its own circumstances and a strong factor had been Daniel James’s determination to die in the face of his parents’ attempts to persuade him otherwise.

Campaigners, however, drew comfort from the decision — particularly when followed by the remarks of Lord Judge — and it remains true that no prosecution has yet been brought over assisting a suicide in England and Wales, an offence punishable by up to 14 years’ imprisonment.

The Purdy ruling was also a distinct advance on a previous test case brought by Dianne Pretty, who suffered from motor neuron disease, and who tried unsuccessfully in 2001 to obtain immunity from prosecution for her husband. She took her fight all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, dying in 2002 a few weeks after losing there. But in the Purdy case, the DPP also made clear that his remarks neither ruled in, nor out, the prosecutions of relatives and he added that the law was workable as it was.

If relatives want absolute certainty therefore, the only answer — if Parliament can be persuaded — is legislation.

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