Meeting of the Parliament 17 March 2026 [Draft]
As I said last week during consideration of stage 3 amendments, and as others have repeated this evening, this is the most consequential bill of this parliamentary session, and it is probably the most consequential bill of the devolution era.
Although I will vote against the bill at decision time, I want to join everybody across the chamber in commending Liam McArthur for his approach, his openness with colleagues, irrespective of political persuasion, and his engagement with lots of professional organisations and families who have experienced difficult deaths. His approach has been second to none.
This is the third vote on assisted dying that I have participated in. The two previous bills, which were brought by Margo MacDonald and Patrick Harvie, were wide in scope, with few safeguards, leaving the door open to unintended consequences. As a result, clinicians at the time opposed the legislation, and both bills failed at stage 1 by a considerable margin. By contrast, this bill has taken a much narrower approach, and many medical and palliative care bodies have remained neutral as a result.
Since the bill was first proposed, I have heard very moving stories from those who believe that assisted dying could have prevented unnecessary suffering and from those who want agency at the end of life. I have also listened to the concerns of disabled people and those who fear that assisted dying could have led to a loved one’s unnecessary death. I cannot do justice to their testimony in four minutes, but their stories stay with us all.
We have considered the role of doctors and nurses, the definition of a terminal illness, the risk of coercive control and much more besides. However, there is no decision on the model that would be used, and there is no certainty about the cost to the NHS for the implementation of this bill. All of that is taking place against a backdrop of financial pressures on palliative care, leaving us with the uncomfortable question of whether terminally ill patients will be able to make a choice at all. I will not rehearse many of the arguments that have been put, but I agree with all of Bob Doris’ comments about palliative care and Brian Whittle’s comments about the real crisis in social care just now.
In dealing with the bill, I worked with Hospice UK, Children’s Hospices Across Scotland—otherwise known as CHAS—the Royal College of Nursing and the Royal College of Psychiatrists to improve the safeguards in the bill. Some of my amendments were accepted, and I thank colleagues for that. I recognise that there has been progress from where the bill started.
There is a fundamental problem with the bill, however. The Scottish Government rightly advised that the employment issues covered by the bill were not legislatively competent, so the bill can become law only with a section 104 agreement between the Scottish and UK Governments. Provisions allowing protection for staff were therefore completely removed from the bill last week, with the promise that they will be put back in after the bill has passed. That was a watershed moment for many members. The UK Government has taken a position of neutrality that mirrors that of the Scottish Government, but I was genuinely concerned that the cabinet secretary could not guarantee to me, when I questioned him, that all the safeguarding provisions would be replicated through a section 104 agreement. For many MSPs, that was the equivalent of asking them to vote in the dark—and for that to come so late in the day was problematic.
There are questions about whether the bill was competent even on introduction. Consequently, it came as no surprise that the Royal College of Psychiatrists changed its view from being neutral to opposing the bill, as did the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in Scotland. Many of us have received emails from clinicians expressing significant concern on that point.
We have all been weighing up the views of constituents: the views of those who will have to implement the bill if it is passed and the views of families who have lost loved ones in difficult circumstances. In all this, our job is to consider the impact of the bill. That is unemotional; it is about analysis. In doing that, I have come to the conclusion—regretfully—that I cannot support the bill as it stands.