A retired GP who has been told she will not be charged over allegations she advised a seriously ill woman on how to die has said she has “no regrets” but has admitted she feared the police investigation would put her in “deep, deep trouble”.

Dr Libby Wilson, 84, was the first person to be arrested in connection with an assisted suicide after new guidelines on euthanasia were published by Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions. She allegedly spoke to Cari Loder, 48, a multiple sclerosis sufferer, twice on the telephone in the days before she took her own life last year.

Speaking yesterday after the case against her was dropped, Dr Wilson, the founder of Friends At The End (Fate) lobby group, pledged to carry on helping people end their lives. “I have no regrets over what I did and I would do the same thing again.

“I don’t wish to become a martyr to the cause and realise people may try to get me into more trouble. I will have to live with that. I have a conscience and it is perfectly clear.

“My sons and daughters were far more worried than I was. I just could not see how they could put an 84-year-old great grandmother in jail for 14 years for twice speaking to someone on the telephone.

“If I was some little flower it could have finished me off but, thankfully, I’m not and I didn’t lose too much sleep. My main worry was if the police had started going in to Fate. I did think about getting rid of my computer hard drive as it was full of documentation about other cases…

“My main concern is that pro-life campaigners call pretending to be people looking for advice on how to kill themselves. These people may try to trap me and start a new case. That’s a risk I will just have to take.

“I have campaigned for more than 30 years for assisted suicide to be legalised and I will continue to do so.”

Bravo! A brave doctor, a doctor with a conscience and more courage than any ten politicians or priests.