Members of the Scottish Parliament have been urged to listen to the concerns of doctors and other frontline health workers and reject ‘unsafe’ plans to legalise assisted dying in a knife-edge vote on Tuesday.
The controversial proposal to allow terminally ill adults to ask for assistance to end their life will face its D-day when MSPs are asked to make their final vote at around 10pm.
It follows four days of debates on amendments last week which have seen further changes including that the person must be expected to die within six months.
But major concerns have been raised that other proposed amendments to offer safeguards to disabled people, health workers and other vulnerable people were rejected.
Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes yesterday led a last-day appeal for MSPs to show compassion and heed the concerns of those frontline health workers who will need to deliver the proposal, after the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society both changed from a position of neutrality to outright opposition.
She said: ‘I will vote against assisted dying because the Bill is now riskier and less safe after MSPs rejected critical safeguards and outsourced essential protections for doctors to the UK Government.
‘Doctors, psychiatrists, pharmacists and palliative care specialists – the people who would be tasked with implementing this – are asking us not to do it. These are the people on the front line of compassion in Scotland, the people who have dedicated their lives and careers to helping people in life and in death. They think this Bill is unsafe.
MSPs are set to vote on controversial assisted dying legislation
‘Similarly, Hospice UK raised concerns that if the Bill passes, people will have a legal right to state-funded assisted dying and no legal right to palliative care operated by charities.
‘I know MSPs are motivated by compassion, and so we should heed interventions from doctors and nurses whose whole careers are dedicated to caring for us.’
Although the Bill proposed by Liberal Democrat MSP Liam McArthur was passed at stage when MSPs voted by 70 to 56 in favour of its general principles last year, only seven MSPs need to switch sides for the proposal to fall.
Three MSPs – Russell Findlay, Audrey Nicoll and Collette Stevenson – have already announced their intention to vote against the Bill after supporting it at stage one.
In addition, Labour’s Davy Russell – who only became an MSP after the stage one vote – intends to vote against, while ex-Labour MSP Colin Smyth previously supported it but has not been at Parliament since he was accused of possessing indecent images of children and voyeurism and is not expected to vote.
Ahead of the vote, former chief medical officer Sir Harry Burns described the proposal as ‘deeply disturbing’. He said: ‘The present debate over Liam McArthur’s Assisted Suicide Bill has forced MSP’s to examine how we should look after patients with incurable illness. Arguing that we should kill them is deeply disturbing and ignores many ways in which we can and should support them.
‘Passing a law which allows people to be killed because they can’t be cured ignores the reality that we can still allow them to feel the contentment of being in control, rather than the torment of being abandoned.
‘Engaging positively with them to manage their symptoms and suffering gives them agency and dignity. We may have no medical cures for their physical illness, but we can and should give them a sense of control over their lives, not a pathway to death.’
Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes led a last-day appeal for MSPs to consider healthcare workers who will be asked to apply assisted dying legislation
A series of rallies are expected to take place at Holyrood today both in favour of the Bill and against it.
Dr Gordon Macdonald, chief executive of Care Not Killing said: ‘Legalising assisted suicide changes the culture surrounding care for sick and dying people, and would be a catastrophe in terms of how our society confronts illness and disability – not to mention devaluing suicide prevention efforts.’
Michael Veitch, policy officer for the Christian social policy group CARE for Scotland, said: ‘This is the final opportunity for MSPs to reject this dangerous, divisive and damaging Bill.’
But Emma Cooper, convener of the Friends at the End (FATE) group, said: ‘We cannot deny those who are going to die the right to choose. It is simply a misconception that pain relief can alleviate the suffering of all conditions at the end of life.
‘Passing this Bill is the right thing to do, the only compassionate decision.’
In an attempt to address concerns about coercion, MSPs agreed amendments last week which require doctors to discuss indirect pressures affecting a person’s ability to decide freely and also to discuss potential coercion or pressure, including feelings of being a burden or financial pressures.
But a series of other amendments proposing changes to the assessment process to include safeguarding or coercive-control specialists and a requirement for doctors to seek advice from a panel of experts were rejected.
Provisions around conscientious objection for health professionals were controversially removed, while a proposal for an ‘opt-in register’ was rejected.
An amendment proposing the insertion of an institutional objection or ‘no duty to participate’ for care providers such as hospices, care services, independent healthcare services or any other institution specified by ministers was also voted down.
At the beginning of the stage three debate last week, Health Secretary Neil Gray told MSPs that sections of the current Vill remain outside the competence of the Scottish Parliament and may trigger a Supreme Court challenge if passed.
Mr Gray said yesterday that he now believed that the stage three amendments mean it now is within Holyrood’s legislative competence – but refused to say whether he would personally vote for or against it.
He told BBC Radio Scotland Breakfast: ‘I think Liam has led the Bill with grace. I think opponents of the Bill have set out their case, often in a very compelling way, and MSPs now have a choice on a Bill that I believe is now within legislative competence to choose on the merits or otherwise of assisted dying.
‘It is a significant moment for this Parliament. We are in unprecedented territory, and it will be a defining moment, I believe, of this parliamentary session, and could potentially be a defining moment in Scotland for decades to come.
‘So, this is a significant moment that we’ll be voting on tomorrow night.’
Mr McArthur said: ‘To my MSP colleagues I want to say this: this is now the toughest and most comprehensively safeguarded assisted dying Bill in the world.
‘If you believe that dying people should not have to suffer against their will and you have heard, like I have, of the many instances where they have been simply failed by the lack of compassion and safety in our current law, you now have to back this Bill.
‘It is time to look terminally ill Scots in the eye and make this change.’
