Meeting of the Parliament 17 March 2026 [Draft]
I start my speech with the words of Kate Buchanan, who was a constituent of mine. Kate said:
“I don’t want to die, but I am going to … I want to be just like the rest of you—not thinking of dying all the time. But I can’t, it consumes me, it totally dominates my living, worrying about what is going to happen to me and my family. I want my children to not see me suffering, I want to mitigate that. And the only way I can see that happening is through this Bill passing. When you are debating this … think of me and think of my family … and all the other hundreds of families that are going through exactly the same thing. And do right, do right for Scotland.”
Kate died in October 2024.
Kate’s husband, Rodger, shared these words with me:
“My wife, Kate Buchanan, was an active supporter of the assisted dying bill. It has come too late for her to benefit. She found a lump in her breast in September 2023 and died in October 2024. She was fairly well until August 2024 and continued to have good days until mid-September. She was lucky enough to receive excellent care from Strathcarron hospice for the final five days of her life, where the staff were unfailingly kind and responsive. But even the best palliative medicine has its limits, and Kate knew that. It wasn’t the death that she wanted. Actually, she didn’t want to die. She loved life, but she knew she was going to die soon. She had stockpiled some medications to be able to take her own life, but, ultimately, we decided we didn’t have the knowledge to be sure of using them effectively and safely, and we didn’t want to put a friendly GP or a GP friend in a difficult or unlawful position by asking for advice.”
He went on:
“While Kate was an effective supporter of the assisted dying bill, she had a flaw as a campaigner. She was ill. She was dying. She wasn’t going to be able to see the campaign through to the end—something she shared with many other supporters of the bill. Kate was very conscious that this wasn’t a characteristic shared by many of the campaigners opposing the bill. And so that brings me to the point that she tried to make in her campaigning. That it is the task of you, as MSPs, to keep her and her fellow dying and dead supporters of the bill in mind; to represent, as elected lawmakers, those constituents who are no longer here; to put their point across and to have the courage to imagine having that difficult conversation with a loved one about how they wish to die, when it becomes apparent that death will come unavoidably soon.”
This bill has come too late for Kate, but it is not too late for us to vote for assisted dying and to give terminally ill people like Kate the death that they wished for. Remember Kate’s words and do right—do right for Scotland.