Melksham couple Tony and Jane Nicklinson enter the new year continuing a campaign to change the murder law to allow consensual killing.

Mr Nicklinson, 56, suffered a stroke in 2005 that left him almost completely paralysed and suffering from locked in syndrome, which means his mind remains sharp, but he can’t talk or move his body below the neck. He communicates by nodding and blinking; spelling out words letter by letter on a plastic board. He also has an adapted computer he can use to painstakingly create messages on.

The couple both smile when I ask how long they have been married, and Mrs Nicklinson, 55, tells me it will be 25 years in 2011. However she speaks passionately about their desire to see the law changed so her husband’s suffering can end.

They are campaigning to see the murder law changed to permit consensual killing. Mr Nicklinson is unable to commit suicide alone but, following a legal challenge, the couple have received confirmation that if Mrs Nicklinson helped her husband to die, she would be liable to a prosecution for murder.

Mrs Nicklinson said: “The director of Public Prosecutions has said I will be charged with murder if I helped Tony end his life.

“I would have to kill him, plain and simple. We’re asking the Ministry of Justice why the law on murder is unfair. It discriminates against him because he is disabled.

“People say he’s trying to take the right to life away from disabled people, but he’s trying to give them rights. He wants the same right to self determination that everyone else has.”

Mr Nicklinson spells out a message to me via his wife, picking first one of several clusters of letters, and then an individual letter.

He says: “The present law discriminates just because I am disabled. If I’d have known then what I know now I would have just let nature take its course.”

Mr Nicklinson was a lively, outgoing man with a passion for rugby before he suffered the stroke while on a business trip to Athens in 2005. For the next two-and-a-half years the former civil engineer was in hospital, in Greece and the UK.

Now, every day is the same for the Nicklinsons. At 7.15am a nurse helps Mrs Nicklinson get him up, take his medication and have breakfast. At 9.30am, he is given some exercise on a specially adapted bike and has a shower. He then spends the day in his wheelchair until 4pm, when nurse comes to the home and Mr Nicklinson is moved to his armchair. At 10.30pm a nurse arrives to help put him to bed, and then stays the night.

There is no change in the routine, and the couple have no social life to speak of.

Shortly after being discharged from hospital Mr Nicklinson came to the conclusion that he doesn’t want to live out the rest of his natural life in his condition, to this routine. He has hoped for a terminal illness, and has contemplated starvation, but decided he didn’t want to put his family through the pain of such a decision.

Mrs Nicklinson said: “Knowing Tony, it was no surprise. He decided really as soon as he realised he wasn’t going to get any better. Four or five months out of hospital it clicked that this was it. He doesn’t want to get old like this. He said he’d give it a couple of years and he has. This is what he wants.

“People said that he may adjust, that he can sit and watch TV, but he’s got no dignity left at all, no quality of life. They should spend a couple of weeks in Tony’s position, I bet they would soon change their minds then.”

Mr Nicklinson’s case has been taken on by Saimo Chahal, a prominent human rights and mental health lawyer, who will spearhead the campaign to see the law changed.

However, Mrs Nicklinson is harbouring no illusions that the process will be quick. When I ask if they are confident of their chances, she says: “It will take years. Thirty years ago Tony would have died. It’s life at all costs.”