Meeting of the Parliament 12 March 2026 [Draft]
I have listened to Liam McArthur, Elena Whitham and Stephen Kerr on this point. It is obviously important that we record the underlying illness, because that is the condition that the person expected to die from. However, it is also important for us to note that an assisted death caused their death at that moment, otherwise we risk recording the death slightly inaccurately. If we say that the underlying condition caused the death at that moment but it did not do so and it was the assisted death that caused the death at that moment, we could be skewing some data.
I know that this point sounds technical, but that information would be really helpful not just for families, but to allow us to properly understand the course of a particular underlying condition and the likelihood of death from it. That is really important. On that basis, I think that Stephen Kerr’s amendments are stronger, because they gather all of that information.
I take Liam McArthur’s point that there are other reporting requirements laid out in amendments that we will debate later. Those are necessary, and they are also anonymised, which is also necessary. However, families must understand what happened to the person, and the death certificate is important in that regard.
I urge members to consider carefully both amendment 46 and amendment 225. My preference would be that we record both the underlying condition and the fact that it was an assisted death using a substance, not just the use of a substance and the underlying condition.