Meeting of the Parliament 17 March 2026 [Draft]
I believe that life is precious. I believe that life is a gift. I believe deeply that all life has inherent worth. That worth does not diminish with illness, with disability or with proximity to death. However, valuing life is not the same as insisting that life must be prolonged at all costs, in all circumstances, regardless of the suffering and regardless of the wishes of the person living it.
I believe in bodily autonomy. I believe in choice. I believe in the compassionate principle of being able to choose a good death. This debate has never been abstract for me. It is about family members, friends and constituents facing the end of their lives—in pain, in fear and, far too often, without the control, dignity or peace that they deserve.
Liam McArthur’s bill asks us a simple but profound question: do we trust people in the most difficult moments of their lives to make decisions about their own bodies, their own suffering and their own death? For me, the answer is resolutely yes.
People across Scotland have been talking about this question for years. Many are asking for honesty, for autonomy and for compassion. The majority of our constituents agree with the Humanist Society Scotland that
“This bill is about compassion, dignity, and the fundamental right to choose.”
We should be clear that the bill is not about abandoning care. Organisations such as Dignity in Dying remind us that good end-of-life care and assisted dying are not opposites but partners. They argue that everyone should have the right to plan and to control their own death, supported by robust safeguards and high-quality care. I agree. We must invest in palliative care—absolutely—but we must also recognise that even the best palliative care cannot relieve all suffering.
I have also listened carefully to people of faith. Quaker voices, in particular, speak powerfully of conscience, compassion and the importance of accompanying people with love at the end of life. Although there is not unanimity, many people of faith emphasise that moral agency and care must go hand in hand and that we must not turn away from suffering but respond to it with humanity and respect.
I have concerns about aspects of the bill, particularly the six-month prognosis requirement that was agreed last week. Prognostication is not an exact science. Clinicians have told us that predicting life expectancy can be deeply uncertain. By setting an arbitrary limit, we risk excluding people who are suffering unbearably but do not fit neatly into that timeframe. I believe that eligibility should be based on suffering and autonomy, not on a rigid estimate of time remaining.
In our deliberations, we have heard personal testimonies—a wealth of evidence on the lived realities of those at the end of life. We have also heard fears about coercion, vulnerability, the lack of decent palliative care and the message that the bill sends to disabled people. I take those concerns seriously, but I believe that the answer to them is not to deny choice altogether; it is to design care and safeguards that are strong, transparent and rooted in trust.
Right now, the absence of a legal framework does not mean the absence of assisted dying. It means inequality. It means that some people—those with means—travel abroad, while others take matters into their own hands, often in horrific, traumatic and lonely circumstances. That is not a compassionate status quo.
I come back to the people at the heart of this debate—those facing the end of their lives, who are asking not for the impossible, but for dignity, agency and peace. We cannot remove death, but we can shape how people meet it. I am very grateful to Liam McArthur for giving us the opportunity to shape our own deaths. Let us choose compassion. Let us choose dignity.