Meeting of the Parliament 17 March 2026 [Draft]
When I was elected in 2021, I was undecided on the issue of assisted dying, although I knew that a decision was likely to be made on it in the current session of Parliament. Over the five years of this session, I have learned from colleagues and constituents that being a member of Parliament is far more about listening than it is about speaking, and I have listened to the voices of my constituents who have sat at bedsides and suffered as relatives have died the most difficult of deaths. Those families have our empathy and our sympathy, and it is a privilege to be entrusted with their stories.
Today, I believe that MSPs must listen to those who know the messy, emotional, painful and inevitable business of dying best of all—those who have seen thousands of deaths rather than our terrible handfuls, and who have the duty of seeing the aggregate as well as the individual. We should acknowledge together that those who would be most involved in delivering the process of dying that we will vote on today are asking us to vote against it, from the patient’s trusted general practitioner to the psychiatrist who assesses for capacity, the pharmacist who provides the drug and the palliative care staff who are there at the end. All of their esteemed professional bodies have considered the bill and are asking MSPs to vote against it tonight.
Like many Dundonians, I have said goodbye to beloved family and friends in Roxburghe house, which is an outstanding palliative care facility in the verdant shadow of Balgay Hill in Dundee. This morning, I was struck by the testimony of Dr Martin Leiper, who was the lead consultant physician in palliative medicine in Tayside and who led that hospice during his 35 years in our NHS.
Of our vote tonight, he said:
“I’m really worried about the effect that it might have on my former place of work … Whether its staff would be willing to work in an environment where palliative care was delivered and also there was the option for life to be ended. I worry that some staff, fantastic staff, would no longer go into work in that sort of environment.”
I know from speaking directly with staff that that would be true and that a delicate balance would be broken.
Instead of improving palliative medicine, which we all have agreed must improve, the bill risks harming it. The Government reiterated just yesterday that the costs of the bill will be high and that no new money is available to our NHS.
Beyond principle and practicality, there is a lack of safeguards and a fear of coercion in our deeply unequal society, in which the vulnerable and the disabled might easily see themselves as a burden and in which women suffer daily at the hands of men. On top of all that, expert caring staff are opposed to the bill because there is a huge hole at its heart where protection for those dedicated professionals and their care of patients should be. Ceding the process to backroom officials is an unsafe dereliction. It is the job of elected representatives to hear the voices of the people, to balance competing claims and to act in the public interest.
We have exhausted scrutiny of the bill, which the vote at stage 1 allowed to happen. However, to those who agreed with the principle and must now judge the practicality, I say, please, not this bill.