Professor Penney Lewis:

The situation is very similar to the Irish situation, at least on the Statute Book. We have a criminal offence of assisting or encouraging suicide, which is punishable by a term of 14 years in jail. We also have the common law offence of murder, which would be applied in cases of active euthanasia.

In addition, because there had been an unofficial policy of not prosecuting people who assisted their loved ones to travel to Switzerland for an assisted suicide, the House of Lords forced the Director of Public Prosecutions to publish a policy on how decisions regarding prosecutions would be reached in order that people who were contemplating helping a loved one in this way or any other way that would help them to have a suicide could know whether they were likely to be prosecuted. To comply with their Article 8 rights, the court held that any limits on those rights had to be prescribed by law or in accordance with the law and there needed to be a written policy. There is now a written policy in place which is factor based. As such, there are factors in favour of prosecution and factors against and while it is not possible to know exactly whether one will be prosecuted, no one who has ever taken a loved one to Switzerland for an assisted suicide has been prosecuted.