Doctors in the UK will be permitted for the first time to provide medical records to patients who want to travel 
abroad for an assisted suicide without being struck off , according to new guidelines.
Handing over records to patients who then use them to take their own life is “too distant” from encouraging a suicide to risk their fitness to practise being called into question, the General Medical Council said.
Campaigners for assisted suicide said the new guidelines provided “much needed clarity” and would bring an end to cases of doctors refusing to hand over medical records for fear tat they could then be accused of assisting a suicide.
The law over how far doctors could go to help someone who wanted to die remained in question until long-awaited guidance issued by the GMC yesterday.
Dignitas, the Swiss clinic which allows terminally ill people to end their lives, requires medical proof of their condition before allowing them to proceed.
Anyone has a legal right to seek access to their medical records under the Data Protection Act but uncertainty over whether providing this would amount to facilitating assisted suicide has prompted some to refuse.
In one recent case a woman complained that her elderly mother had died a painful death after doctors first agreed to hand over her records only to change their mind after advice from their own legal department.
New GMC guidance to doctors makes clear that, if approached for advice from someone intent on ending their life, they must say only that it is against the law to help.
But it also advises them to “listen and discuss” the patient’s reasons and “provide [them] with the information they want or need so they can make decisions about their health or health care.”
In a separate six-page advice note to its own investigators on how to handle complaints against doctors over assisted suicide, it makes clear that simply providing medical records in itself should not call their fitness to practise into question.
Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, said: “This guidance clarifies, for the first time that doctors are legally allowed to provide their patients with their medical records if they ask for them in order to be able to choose an assisted death abroad.”