In that time, the broadcaster has failed to produce a single documentary or drama-documentary from the viewpoint of those opposed to a weakening of the law on assisted suicide.

Disabled campaigners spoke out again over alleged bias at the BBC after the screening of the latest programme, a documentary fronted by the author Sir Terry Pratchett, who has Alzheimer’s disease and is a vocal supporter of legalising assisted suicide.

Pratchett failed to interview any disabled opponents of legalisation, but instead talked to three disabled people who were in favour of changing the law, including two who had decided to end their lives at the notorious Dignitas clinic in Switzerland.

The documentary followed one man with motor neurone disease to the clinic, where Pratchett watched him take his own life with the assistance of Dignitas staff.

Pratchett is one of the funders of the Commission on Assisted Dying, which is chaired by Lord Falconer – a fellow supporter of legalisation – and was set up by the pro-assisted suicide charity Dignity in Dying. Up to nine of the 12 commissioners have previously supported changing the law.

So far, the BBC has received 301 comments of “appreciation” about the Pratchett documentary, but 1,219 complaints.

Since December 2008, the BBC has screened a string of programmes with a similar theme: an edition of Panorama fronted by the assisted suicide campaigner and MSP Margo MacDonald; a docu-drama about the Dignitas death of another assisted suicide campaigner, Anne Turner; the Dimbleby Lecture delivered last year by Pratchett; and an edition of the BBC’s Inside Out, in which journalist Ray Gosling made a false confession that he had helped a former lover to die.

Baroness [Jane] Campbell, convenor of Not Dead Yet UK, a disabled people’s organisation that campaigns against legalisation, said the BBC’s bias was “too strange to be true”.

She said she believed there must be executives at the BBC who were “signed-up members of Dignity in Dying”.

She added: “Someone is influencing the BBC, otherwise we would have had more balance; at least one programme.

“We know that there are many of us and many organisations that have written to the BBC and so have high-profile senior people, who have said: ‘This is outrageous, what is going on?’”

Baroness Campbell and two fellow peers, the barrister Lord Carlile – an expert on penal reform and security issues – and the pro-life campaigner Lord Alton, this week wrote to the BBC’s director-general, Mark Thompson, and the chair of the BBC Trust, Lord [Chris] Patten, to protest at the lack of balance on the issue.

The Care Not Killing alliance, which also campaigns against legalisation, called on the health and culture secretaries to carry out an “urgent investigation into the way assisted suicide is covered by the BBC and its link to English suicide rates”.

The alliance said the latest documentary breached international guidelines on the portrayal of suicide, and warned of a “real risk” of “copycat suicides”.

A BBC spokeswoman said there was “clear editorial justification” for the inclusion of the Dignitas death, which “does not encourage suicide and does not breach BBC guidelines”.

She said: “The BBC doesn’t have a stance on assisted suicide, but we do think that this is an important matter of debate.”

She later claimed that the documentary “was not a pro-assisted death programme” but “a documentary about people’s personal experiences”.

She said: “We do not commission programmes based on agendas, so it would be completely against all BBC policy to commission a programme just because it was a pro or anti look at a specific agenda.”

And she said it would be “absolutely physically impossible” for one person at the BBC to be able to promote such a pro-assisted suicide agenda.

But she was unable to explain – despite repeated requests – why there had been five BBC pro-assisted suicide documentaries and drama-documentaries since late 2008, and none representing the views of opponents of legalisation.

When asked about the alliance’s call for an investigation, a Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) spokesman said: “It is a matter for the BBC and the BBC Trust.”

A spokesman for the Department of Health (DH) – which is currently working on a new national suicide prevention strategy – said it was a matter for the DCMS or the Ministry of Justice, and added: “I don’t think there is anything DH can do about it.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said it was for the DCMS to comment.

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick, of Not Dead Yet UK (NDY UK), told a House of Lords meeting that campaigners trying to weaken the law on euthanasia and assisted suicide were using “extreme cases” to play on the public’s “emotional reactions”. He said NDY UK did not want to “play the same game”.

NDY UK argues that legalisation would pressure people with life-limiting conditions to end their lives prematurely because of diminishing levels of social care support and to avoid becoming a burden on their families.

It also believes legalisation would reinforce attitudes that disabled people’s lives are not worth living.

Fitzpatrick, the Disability Rights Commission’s commissioner with responsibility for Wales throughout its seven-year existence, told the meeting: “We want to be clear that extreme cases make bad law, but the play on the emotional reactions of people to extreme cases is really difficult to counteract.”

He criticised the BBC’s decision to produce a documentary on assisted suicide in which the novelist Sir Terry Pratchett is filmed watching the death of a man with motor neurone disease at the notorious Dignitas clinic in Switzerland.

Baroness [Jane] Campbell, convenor of NDY UK, said disabled campaigners opposed to a change in the law were fighting the financial resources of the main pro-assisted suicide charity, Dignity in Dying.

But she said disabled people were tired of having to expose their private lives to the media in order to persuade the public to oppose legalisation.

She said: “What disabled people are saying to me is: ‘I am not willing to prostrate my life in front of the tabloids anymore.’ We must win this on the argument.”

The meeting also heard from Dr Xavier Mirabel, president of France’s Alliance pour les Droits de la Vie (The Right to Life Alliance), which has spent 15 years campaigning to turn French public opinion away from the support for legalising euthanasia that had been fed by high-profile, “extreme”, “emotional” cases.

The oncology specialist explained how the alliance had grown from just three campaigners to an organisation able to distribute one million cards explaining the arguments against legalizing euthanasia in 50 towns across France.

This January, the campaign staged a demonstration of 700 people dressed in shrouds, who lay in the street outside the French Senate building as senators prepared to vote on a bill that would have legalized euthanasia. The Senate voted against the bill.

Mirabel said the alliance had also organised “micro demonstrations” of four or five people in towns across France, which secured huge coverage in local newspapers.

After the meeting, the BBC said the documentary, Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die, was due to be aired in June. After the programme, it will stage a Newsnight debate that discusses “all sides of the issue”.

A BBC spokeswoman added: “The BBC doesn’t have a stance on assisted suicide, but we do think that this is an important matter of debate.

“Terry Pratchett is a public figure, and his journey is of particular significance at a time when assisted death is in discussion.”

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com