A woman suffering from multiple sclerosis today lost her landmark legal bid to clarify the law on assisted suicide.

Two senior High Court judges rejected Debbie Purdy's application for a ruling to force the Director of Public Prosecutions to offer further guidance - essentially, spelling out whether her husband would face criminal charges if he escorted her to a clinic abroad where she could die.

Her lawyers argued that the DPP was in breach of her Article 8 right to respect for her private and family life under the European Convention on Human Rights because of his failure to make the law clear.

But today, Lord Justice Scott Baker and Mr Justice Aikens ruled at London’s High Court that her human rights had not been infringed.

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BACKGROUND

• GP ‘told patients he supported euthanasia’

• Man spared jail for suffocating sick wife

• Doctor is cleared of hastening deaths of babies

• Husband who helped wife die found guilty

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“We cannot leave this case without expressing great sympathy for Ms Purdy, her husband and others in a similar position who wish to know in advance whether they will face prosecution for doing what many would regard as something that the law should permit, namely to help a loved one go abroad to end their suffering when they are unable to do it on their own," Lord Justice Scott Baker said.

“This would involve a change in the law. The offence of assisted suicide is very widely drawn to cover all manner of different circumstances; only Parliament can change it.”

Ms Purdy, 45, had primary progressive MS diagnosed in 1995 and now lives in a specially adapted home in Bradford, West Yorkshire, confined to a wheelchair. She plans to choose her moment to die but wants to know whether her husband, the Cuban jazz violinist Omar Puente, will be prosecuted if he helps her to travel to a clinic in Belgium or Zurich, Switzerland, to commit suicide if her condition becomes unbearably painful.

If today’s ruling is not overturned on appeal, and the law is not changed, Ms Purdy says she may have to end her life earlier than otherwise might be necessary so that she can do it without help, and thus avoid putting her husband at risk of prosecution.

Speaking outside the court after the ruling, Mrs Purdy said: "I love him, and I'm not prepared for him to go to prison.

"I just feel any British law should be clear. You should know what actions put you on which side of the law." Her husband added that the verdict was disappointing.

The High Court gave permission for the couple to appeal to the House of Lords, and said - in deference to Mrs Purdy's deteriorating health - that the case should be heard quickly.

The law on assisted suicide is currently determined by the 1961 Suicide Act, which makes aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring a suicide in England and Wales a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

Courts are also bound by precedent set in the 2002 House of Lords judgment on the case of Diane Pretty , a motor neurone disease sufferer who tried and failed to gain an assurance that her husband would not be prosecuted if he helped her to commit suicide at home in Britain. Ms Pretty died the same year of complications from her illness, the outcome she had been trying to avoid.

Mrs Purdy's solicitor said that ultimately it was for Parliament to write a new law on assisted suicide, but in the meantime there was no clarity on what constituted aiding or abetting.

"Does it involve buying air tickets, pushing someone's wheelchair onto an aeroplane? The public needs to know and to have answers to these questions."

Although at least 100 Britons are reported to have died at the Dignitas clinic since 1992, none of their relatives has been prosecuted for accompanying them, despite lengthy police investigations. The most recent and harrowing case to become public involved a young rugby player who was left paralysed last year when a scrum collapsed is being investigated by police.

Dan James, 23, who once played for England Under-16s, looked destined for a professional playing career before he was left paralysed from the the chest down after his spine was dislocated while training with Nuneaton Rugby Club in March 2007.

He died last month after travelling to a Swiss euthanasia clinic with his parents, Mark and Julie. They are now being investigated by the police, after being reported by a social worker for their part in his death.

An inquest into his death was opened last month. The circumstances of the death were recorded as: “Deceased travelled to Switzerland with a view to ending his own life. He was admitted to a clinic where he died.”

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