New guidelines on assisted suicide will apply in the UK as well as overseas, the director of public prosecutions has said.
Keir Starmer QC is clarifying the law after Law Lords backed multiple sclerosis sufferer Debbie Purdy's call for a policy statement on whether people who helped someone kill themselves should be prosecuted.
As many as 115 people from the UK have gone to the Swiss clinic Dignitas to die, but no-one has been prosecuted so far.
Mr Starmer told the Daily Telegraph: "This is not a policy that's going to apply only to those who go abroad.
"This policy is going to cover all assisted suicides. The same broad principles will apply. They've got to apply to all acts, in the jurisdiction or out of it. We won't have separate rules for Dignitas."
He added: "On the question of whether this is better dealt with by Parliament, there's nothing much I can do to nudge them along. They're divided, there's no inclination to change the law, so we have no choice but to produce this policy."
Under current legislation, those who "aid, abet, counsel or procure" someone else's suicide can be prosecuted and jailed for up to 14 years.
Ms Purdy, from Undercliffe in Bradford, West Yorkshire, wants to know what would happen to her Cuban husband Omar Puente if he helped her travel abroad to end her life.
She took her case to the highest court in the country after the High Court and Court of Appeal held that it was for Parliament, not the courts, to change the law.
Last week the Law Lords agreed that changes were a matter for Parliament, but upheld Ms Purdy's argument that the DPP should put in writing the factors that he regarded as relevant in deciding whether or not to prosecute.
