Assisted dying: Paralysed man trying to change law so he can be helped to die

A paralysed man who wants the right to an assisted death has applied to the High Court to try to change UK law.

Paul Lamb, who is almost totally paralysed from the neck down and lives in constant pain, is seeking judicial review of legislation which makes it an offence to assist suicide.

Mr Lamb, 63, was severely injured in a car accident in 1990, and can only move his head and has limited movement in his right arm.

He says he wants to be able to end his life in a manner and at a time of his choosing, and that that the current law breaches his human rights against discrimination and respect for private life.

His application to the High Court argues that he has an irreversible disability which causes him intolerable pain and suffering, as a result of which he wishes to be able to take his own life at a time of his choosing.

However, his disability renders him incapable of taking his own life, unlike an able-bodied person.

He says the law puts him and other severely disabled people like him at a particular disadvantage, because it prevents him from exercising his autonomy over the fundamental decision of whether to end a life of intolerable suffering.

"I have been fighting this fundamental basic human right of choice over one's own life since 2013," he said.

"I need to have peace of mind that I can make the decision to end my life with dignity. I am talking about my life, my decision, why should I be made to suffer?

"I feel so strongly about this. I have no option but to seek the court's intervention again. I want to fight this, not just for me but for the many others in my position. We need to end this cruel and discriminatory law."

Humanists UK Chief Executive Andrew Copson said: 'We are proud to be backing Paul's case in his efforts to change the law for those who are of sound mind and either terminally ill or incurably suffering. It is disgraceful that Paul has to face the truly terrible prospect of starving to death, and be refused a dignified and peaceful ending to his life."

The application comes in the week Parliament debated assisted dying for the first time in four years, in a backbench debate brought by independent MP Nick Boles.

Opinion polls show majority support for assisted dying and earlier this year the Royal College of Physicians shifted its position from officially opposed to neutral.

A number of British nationals have travelled to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland for an assisted death, with some family members facing questioning by the police.

Some clinicians and medical and faith groups are adamantly opposed to the law changing, fearing it could erode clinicians' duty to protect life.

Dr Mike Pickering of the Care Not Killing alliance, the chief executive of the Christian Medical Fellowship, said he believed changing the law would put the vulnerable at risk.

"If you have care costs associated with your treatment, if you have an inheritance being worn down by that, of course people are going to feel a pressure to not be selfish and seek assisted dying even if it is not their wish, and a right to die could become a duty to die imperceptibly."

Previous attempts to challenge the law have failed.

Alongside Jane Nicklinson, the widow of locked-in sufferer Tony Nicklinson, Mr Lamb challenged the UK's 1961 Suicide Act in a case to the Court of Appeal in 2013, Supreme Court in 2014, and the European Court of Human Rights in 2015.