Chris Davies MEP

Lib Dem Euro-MP Chris Davies says that people seeking medical help to die should be able to do so at home in Tameside and not be forced to travel to Zurich.

Liberal Democrat Chris Davies has welcomed the result of a referendum in Switzerland rejecting a proposed ban on foreigners taking advantage of the country’s law permitting medically assisted suicide.

More than 150 people from Britain have travelled to Switzerland to seek help from the organisation Dignitas, based in Zurich.

Davies, who has written about Swiss practice and met on several occasions with Ludwig Minelli, who founded Dignitas in 1998, described the law in Britain as “cruel and inhumane.”

He said: “In a civilised country the freedom should exist for people who are suffering unendurably to seek medical assistance to due. It amounts to little less than torture to force people to live against their will in circumstances that most of us hope we will never experience.

“People in these situations don’t want to be forced to make an arduous last journey to Switzerland to exercise their free will, they want to die at home, at a time of their choosing, surrounded by people who love them.”

Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg have all followed Switzerland in legalising medically assisted suicide if strict rules are followed to respect the wishes of individual patients and curb any risk of undue influence.

Attempts to change the law in Britain along similar lines have been defeated in the House of Lords, although the Director of Public Prosecutions has issued guidelines expected to ensure that family members who help a loved one travel to Switzerland to die will not face prosecution under the Suicide Act.

Chris Davies claims that there is massive public support in Britain for a reform of the law and blames a religious minority for blocking reform.

He said: “A massive 85% of voters in Zurich have seen off an attempt by Christian evangelicals to ban assisted suicide. I believe that the views of people in Switzerland and in Britain are really very similar.”

The Liberal Democrats are the only main political party to support the introduction of a law on assisted suicide similar to that in Belgium and the Netherlands, but the Coalition Government is not known yet to have discussed the issue.