Gordon Brown yesterday insisted he was "totally against" relaxing the law to allow assisted suicide.
Gordon Brown yesterday insisted he was "totally against" relaxing the law to allow assisted suicide.
There have been mounting calls for a change in the law in the wake of a series of cases of Britons, who have travelled to Switzerland to die.
At present, it is a criminal offence to "aid, abet, counsel or procure" someone else's suicide, yet earlier this month, the Director of Public Prosecutions in England decided not to charge the parents of Daniel James, who accompanied their 23-year-old tetraplegic son to Zurich to allow him to die. In Scotland, Margo MacDonald, the Independent MSP who suffers from Parkinson's Disease, has pledged to introduce a bill at Holyrood next year for "physician-assisted dying".
Asked about the issue by Roman Catholic Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor on BBC Radio's Today programme, Mr Brown replied: "I am totally against laws on that. It is not really for us to create any legislation that would put pressure on people ... We have got to make it absolutely clear that the importance of human life is recognised."
