Meeting of the Parliament 13 March 2026 [Draft]
I thank Jamie Hepburn for his intervention. He should not worry about intervening on me—it is not a problem.
My first point in response to that is that the Government and public bodies have great experience in publishing only data that is statistically and appropriately anonymised. If a body cannot do that, it cannot publish it. There are clear rules on that.
I have not set out how often periodic case reviews should be; I have left that as a matter of generality. I hope that they would form the annual reports as well as the overall review of the eventual act. Clearly, however, we do not know how many people will avail themselves of assisted dying. That is the point that I would emphasise to Mr Hepburn. It might be a very small number, but it might not be. Why not bolt the provision in place and do the periodic case review to get a qualitative assessment of how the bill is working in practice? That is how I would respond to Mr Hepburn’s point—and it was a reasonable point to make.
My other amendments in the group identify important data items without which it would not be possible to monitor and understand the eventual operation of the act adequately. I will run through the amendments as quickly as I can.
Amendment 59 would ensure the collection of data on how many times the original medical practitioners conducting assessments took the steps provided for in section 7. For instance, were inquiries carried out with health and social care professionals?
Amendment 60 would ensure that we captured how many times medical practitioner reports had been completed and the reasons for approving or not approving an assisted death.
Amendments 61 and 286 would ensure the collection of the number of applicants who were assessed as having or not having appropriate social care and palliative care, respectively.
Amendment 62 would ensure the collection of the number of complications, adverse reactions and unintended effects reported under section 15, on the provision of assistance.
Amendment 63 would ensure that data was collected on relevant professionals who had completed training requirements.
Amendment 281 would require the number of assisted deaths involving each practitioner to be gathered, enabling the flagging of practitioners with unusually high rates. That might not happen, but it would be reasonable to gather that data anyway.
Amendment 282 would require the gathering of data on the number of times that the period of reflection was less than 14 days.
I am keen for all those amendments on data-gathering requirements, with reporting to the Scottish ministers, to be agreed to.
In concluding, I will briefly mention my amendment 64, which Audrey Nicoll also mentioned. The details are important for a full analysis of the impact of the eventual act across our society, although I acknowledge the challenges of collecting such data. Amendment 64 would require the capture of data on whether a person who received assisted dying lived alone. We can imagine why one would want to know that. It would also require the capture of data on receipt of benefits—and we can imagine why one would want to know that. Furthermore, it would require the capture of data on the level of household deprivation and the person’s housing status. We would reasonably want to know whether there were patterns to all those things. I acknowledge that the data might be difficult to collect, but I have lodged the amendment nevertheless, as it would be worth while to understand any patterns among people who wished to seek and receive assisted death.