Questions for the BBC

Freelance broadcaster Ray Gosling admitted smothering his lover, who had AIDS, in a 12-minute documentary on death and dying broadcast at 1930 on Monday 15 February on BBC East Midlands’ Inside Out programme. He did not however name the person he killed, nor the place or date of the death.
A spokeswoman for Nottinghamshire police said yesterday that the force had not been aware of the issue until the broadcaster made his revelation on television. Asked if the BBC should have contacted police when Gosling initially confessed to the killing last year, a Nottinghamshire police spokesman said: ‘You would hope that anyone with information about a crime like that would certainly refer it to us in the first instance so police can investigate.’ Police have now arrested Mr Gosling on suspicion of murder.
The BBC has come under criticism for not informing the police about the confession before the programme was screened and has in response issued the following statement which has been reported in a news item on the BBC website and which was also read out at 7.50am by presenter Nicky Campbell on BBC Radio Five Live’s morning news programme yesterday.
‘The BBC said they will co-operate fully with the investigation. They said Mr Gosling's “secret” was not known before he was commissioned to make the report on death and dying, adding: "The first the BBC knew of this incident was during filming for the programme that was broadcast on 15 Feb 2010. The BBC is under no legal obligation to refer the matter to the police in these circumstances.”’
Care Not Killing was contacted by various BBC outlets in the late afternoon of Monday before the programme was screened and asked to provide spokespeople for BBC News Channel, the Ten O’clock News and BBC breakfast. We were not given details of the case but were told that the various BBC producers had received copies of an embargoed report which gave details of a confession to a mercy killing which would be shown on Inside Out.
It was clearly evident from this that the BBC intended to make this ‘murder confession’ an international news story without informing the police that they were going to do so. This raises serious questions about governance and ethics at the BBC.
The viewing public and British taxpayers deserve answers to the following questions which are not answered in the very brief BBC statement above.
1. On what date did the murder confession first become known to members of BBC staff?
2. Who amongst BBC regional and national staff was informed about the statement and when?
3. Was the Director General of the BBC aware of the confession before the programme was screened and if not who was the most senior person in the BBC to be made aware and when were they told?
4. Was legal advice sought at any point about the advisability of screening the programme and if so what advice was given and by whom?
5. Who made the decision to screen the programme on Monday night and was there any connection between this and the imminent publication of the DPP prosecution guidelines on assisted suicide?
6. Did the BBC take into consideration the impact that the screening of the confession and its subsequent global media coverage might have on any prosecution that might ensue?
7. Why did the BBC decide not to inform the police about the confession before the programme was shown?

The fickle nature of opinion polls

Did you see BBC News at Ten tonight? An opinion poll of 1,000 people has shown that fewer now believe that man-made climate change is a reality. Well, of course it would, wouldn't it! The media have been telling us over the last month or two that there has been skullduggery in climate change research. But very few of us - certainly not I - are able to examine the evidence and come to a balanced judgement, so we have to rely on what the media tell us and the spin they give it. And there's also been a cold winter, which is not of course relevant but which makes it hard for those who don't understand the subject to believe in global warming.

I mention all this, as you will have guessed, because it provides a near-exact parallel to our own situation. Opinion polls show support for 'assisted dying', not because those concerned have thought about or understand the subject but because they are reliant on what the media have told them - and good care and good deaths aren't news, whereas prosecutions and Swiss suicides are.

Kay Gilderdale should have been investigated

Phil Friend, Chairman of Radar the Disability Rights Organisation, has today posted a fascinating article in the Guardian titled ‘Kay Gilderdale should have been investigated’. In it he argues that in cases of assisted dying, anyone involved should have to account for their actions.

In response, Emily Halsall, speaking for Dignity in Dying, says that the number of people killing themselves in Oregon with legally supplied drugs from their doctors is ‘small and steady’. But, if you look at the official figures, it isn’t! The numbers have risen fourfold in the 13 years of the law’s existence and they are on a rising trend. If the trend were to be seen in Britain, we would see nearly 1,000 physician assisted suicides a year here. Moreover, independent evidence is emerging that one in six of those who are killing themselves in this way were suffering from untreated depression that was not detected by the doctors who assessed them.

Ms Halsall says that Dignity in Dying wants to protect people from abuse but does not think that the current law provides that protection. So how would that protection be increased, one might ask, by relaxing the law? The standard answer to this, of course, from the pro-euthanasia lobby is that we needn’t worry as there would be ‘safeguards’. Five years ago a parliamentary select committee examined so-called safeguards in Lord Joffe’s ‘assisted dying’ bill and drew attention to a range of weaknesses in them. Yet, though the committee made suggestions for tightening them up, the same old ‘safeguards’ are trotted out every time this issue is discussed.

It's easy to talk in broad brush terms about changing the law for ‘terminally ill, mentally competent adults nearing the end of their lives’. But experience has shown that, when you get down to actually defining these terms with sufficient care to protect the vulnerable, the matter isn’t so easy as it sounds. The safeguards we have seen to date are illusory.

This is a highly complex issue where the stakes are literally those of life or death. We should not forget that public safety is the first responsibility of all law making.

Euthanasia Bill will lead to hundreds of Scottish deaths per year

The End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill will lead to hundreds of Scottish deaths per year from assisted suicide and euthanasia if passed by MSPs, Care Not Killing (CNK) Scotland has warned.

The coalition group, brought together to promote palliative care as an alternative to any form of euthanasia being introduced in Scotland, says the scope of the bill is so wide and the safeguards so inadequate that it will lead, if passed, to people being killed without their consent as happens over 1,000 times per year currently in the Netherlands under a similar law.

Speaking on the content of the bill, launched earlier today by Independent Lothians MSP Margo Macdonald, CNK’s Policy Officer in Scotland, Dr Gordon Macdonald, said:

‘Margo Macdonald’s bill is hugely broad in scope, allowing not only assisted suicide but also voluntary euthanasia, not just for the terminally ill but for anyone who is ‘permanently physically incapacitated’, unable ‘to live independently’ and who ‘finds life intolerable’.

‘Ms MacDonald’s optimistic prediction of 50 Scottish euthanasia deaths per year is dangerously misleading. Her proposed bill is even more lax than the current law in the Netherlands where one in 38 deaths is from euthanasia – this would equate to almost 1,500 Scottish deaths per year. Her proposed safeguards are largely illusory because disabled and sick people will inevitably feel pressure to end their lives so as not to be a financial or emotional burden on others. Once euthanasia is sanctioned as a ’therapeutic option’ high profile hard cases will inevitably lead to further erosion of the public conscience and further relaxation of practice. This process of ‘incremental drift’ has been well documented in the Netherlands.’

“We are currently producing a detailed critique of the bill but it is already clear that Ms MacDonald’s proposals, if passed, will introduce a Dutch-type system. In the Netherlands currently up to 1,000 adult patients and dozens of disabled babies, under the Groningen protocol, are killed each year without their consent despite the fact that this is not specifically permitted by the legislation. Half of all Netherlands cases of euthanasia are not reported and increasingly so-called ‘terminal sedation’, giving large doses of sedatives whilst withdrawing food and fluids with the explicit intention of ending life, is now common practice accounting for 8% of all deaths.”