Professor Richard Huxtable:

I will keep it fairly brief. I should preface my comments by saying that the model I proposed is based on my reading of the law in England and Wales, so it may need to be tailored for other jurisdictions, the committee’s included. Essentially, what happens a great deal in our ethical debates about what the law should say about assisted dying is that we tend to put this in terms of whether the practice should be justified or not justified. What I try to do with the proposal of a possible alternative offence is to put it in the language of excuse, thereby splitting the difference by recognising that what we are discussing has a degree of wrongdoing but also a degree of right doing. It might then be a lesser offence than homicide and be dealt with more leniently, particularly where family members are involved and so forth. That is broadly the picture of the proposal. The idea is that it would sit outside regular homicide law and the black and white terms of justified and instead permit a degree of excuse. That is the middle ground I have pondered but I recognise that it has not been well received on either side, perhaps understandably.