Meeting of the Parliament 17 March 2026 [Draft]
I start by echoing the tributes that have been paid to my friend Liam McArthur and his excellent team for getting us to this stage.
Throughout our consideration of the bill, I have listened with quiet awe and, at times, great sadness to the testimony of colleagues and constituents who have lost the people they love in the most brutal and unforgiving of circumstances. I have nothing to match that. I have no comparable experience from my own family or friendship group to offer the Parliament, and I am profoundly grateful for that, just as I am grateful for the strength of those who have shared those stories, framing the debate around the human at the heart of this, speaking about their loss of agency, their loss of dignity, the agony of it and the terror of it, distilling into heartbreaking clarity what really matters at the end and how, all too often, people are robbed of so much of that in their final days.
Medical culture and practice have led us to a point where life can be foreshortened, but only with the removal of sustenance and fluids. That is the barbaric and inhumane compromise that we have settled for, where emaciated bodies are made as comfortable as possible but are still left to a lingering death that can take many days. The provisions in the bill offer patients in the end stages of life a far more gentle and dignified alternative to that—but only if they are terminally ill, only if they are aged 18 or over, only if they have mental capacity, only if they are acting of their own volition and only if their clinicians agree that they have fewer than six months left to live. That is a powerful matrix of safety, and the member in charge has drawn from the very best practice of those jurisdictions that have gone before us.
We benefit from that because we are not pioneers in this. More than 300 million people live in jurisdictions that already offer assisted dying. We should consider that, over the decades, not a single one of those countries or territories has ever reversed that decision. If this were so readily exploitable or dangerous, there would be examples of repeal—but there are not.
The narrow scope and significant safeguards of Liam McArthur’s bill as introduced have only been strengthened and enhanced by the quality and depth of the amendments that we have made as the bill has moved through the Parliament. The guardrails around the bill are unprecedented. This is one of the safest approaches in the world.
Please do not vote against the bill because you are waiting for a safer one. In this moment of final decision, all that is left for us to decide is whether we support the idea of choice at the end, or we do not. I respect and have great admiration for many of those who have spoken in opposition to the bill, but we have made sure that, if it passes, you will never be forced to choose it. I ask members: please do not take the choice away from the rest of us.
I have no real fear of death itself, but I have abundant fear of dying. Uncontrollable breakthrough pain frightens me. Asphyxiation and an inability to swallow frighten me. More than anything else, the loss of my identity and the lack of recognition of those I love frighten me.
I want to be able to choose a different end and to remain the author of my life’s story until the very last word, but the law as it stands makes death a lottery—a potentially cruel and terrifying uncertainty that all too many Scots meet the sharpest edges of. That is why, with all my heart, I hope that we change the law tonight.