Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home with me Alan Tolhurst.

This week, after a new bill attempting to legalise assisted dying in the UK, was introduced to the House of Commons.

We're looking at how likely Kim Lethbetter's private member's bill is to eventually become law.

The scope it might cover, comparing other countries like Canada have introduced and managed the process of assisted dying, and managing the concerns of those

worried about coercion, and that passing the law might start a slippery slope towards legalised

euthanasia. With me to discuss all that, I have the Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion,

Sean Berry, whose parties manifesto this year pledged to support a change in the law to legalise assisted dying. We also have former Lord Chancellor and Labour peer Lord Faulkner, who has brought his own

assisted dying bill to the House of Lords and discussed these issues on his podcast,

Law and Disorder. As well as that, we have Nathan Stillwell, Sister Dying Campaigner at

Humanist UK.

Yeah, so Nathan, I'll start with you. Just talk us through kind of legally where we are at the moment with assisted dying in the UK.

So the law is in the UK at the moment is determined by the 1961 Suicide Act, which criminalises assisting or encouraging a suicide.

Now already that runs us into trouble because I've had people ring me up as an assisted dying campaigner and say, how do I get to Switzerland?

You know, I'm in enormous pain and suffering.

And arguably, if I tell them to Google it, am I encouraging or assisting?

Now, prosecutions under this law are incredibly low, and that's because the director of public prosecutions published these

guidelines of what makes you more or less likely to be prosecuted for this. But even under those

guidelines, we run into serious issues. So there was the case recently of Sue Lawford, and she

accompanied a woman called Sharon Johnson to Dignitasin Switzerland. And on Sue's return, she was arrested at 5am in

the morning, put in the back of a police van in her pajamas, taken to a police cell for 16 hours,

and investigated for six months, all for the compassionate act of assisting someone who wanted to go

to Switzerland for a peaceful, dignified death. So the law at the moment is a mess

...