Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)

It may be helpful for the Committee if I simply read, very briefly, for the assistance of considering this amendment, what the former Chief Coroner of England and Wales, Justice Teague, said about the background to the decriminalisation of suicide when giving evidence to the Select Committee. I think the Committee would want to consider it. He said that “the reason the change was made was not a change in the public policy towards suicide; it was a change in the criminal law to decriminalise it, because the situation had developed where you could not effectively prosecute the person who successfully committed suicide. What the law was doing was prosecuting people who failed. It was manifestly improper and unjust that people should, in effect, be punished for failing to achieve suicide, but it was always made clear at the time of the debate in Parliament that it would remain an offence to assist a suicide, and that it would be the policy of the law that suicide was not something to be approved of”. In that context, the Committee may wish to consider whether, given that the act being considered here is the assistance of a suicide, it should be plainly named as such, as the noble Lord, Lord Frost, proposes in his amendment.