Professor David Albert Jones:

I will take the second one first. Suicide prevention is still a priority for all kinds of reasons. However if this is in place, it can cause problems for the implementation of suicide prevention among certain categories of people. Consider a scenario from Canada, for example, where someone with a terminal illness attempts suicide and ends up in the accident and emergency department. There have been cases where it has been suggested to people, who had not previously requested it, that they have medical assistance in dying. Other doctors who take a different view of what suicide prevention should mean in this context find it difficult to be consistent in relation to suicide prevention. There has been a controversy in Canada about how to operationalise suicide prevention among people who are eligible for assisted dying. I hope that makes sense.

It is important to look at what happens in terms of notification and how serious the implications of not doing so are. Places like Belgium, for example, have large-scale practices, some of which are within the law and some of which are outside the law and are simply not reported. Not only that, but when they are not reported there is a kind of acceptance of them and prosecutions do not happen. Lack of reporting is a problem in other jurisdictions, but we do at least have evidence for it in Belgium. There is a lack of reporting, which then does not lead to prosecutions because it is seen as a technicality.