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If the committee—and the member—is willing in principle to accept what I have said, and members feel that there is just a technical drafting issue that needs to be tidied up, I am happy to look at that. I am interested to know whether that is the member’s view or whether he is opposed to the amendment in principle, which I think is a different issue.

I conclude by saying that amendment 147 asks us to protect the vulnerable, to defend hope and to ensure that no one’s darkest moment is mistaken for their final one.

This has been a really helpful debate, although contributions from members have probably raised more concerns for me. There are some contradictions in what we are hearing. If we accept that prognosis is flawed, how can we ever offer assisted suicide? Prognosis is open to debate. I understand that it is difficult for general practitioners and other doctors to give people an accurate prognosis.

I accept that, and I am sure that Liam McArthur has spoken to many people in the medical profession who feel very uncomfortable about this bill, because they will be asked to make decisions. At the moment, when it comes to prognosis, they are making decisions about what future treatment might be wanted, rather than saying, “Do you want to end your life?” That is a very different position to put general practitioners in.

As many know, my older brother is a GP, and he tells me a story. Many years ago, somebody came into his surgery. He did the usual tests and things. The person said, “How long do I have to live?”, and he replied, “Probably six to eight months.” However, last week, he was still playing golf with that person.

The situation is therefore very open, and I understand that it is very difficult to put time limits on a prognosis, but we are having to make law not just for the next two or three years but the future. Unless we have clear interpretation and clarity in the bill, we are open to judicial creep. That is a concern.

I absolutely agree—and I was coming on to that.

In his contribution about whether someone’s life is meaningful, Sandesh Gulhane seemed to say that, if I have an early diagnosis but take the view that my life is no longer meaningful, the process can start. I accept that people would have to go through discussions and all that, but I am deeply worried that, as a society, we are saying to somebody that, although they can have years to live with the appropriate treatment, we will open the door for them. The disabled community will be very concerned by what we have heard this morning from some members of the committee. We are opening a door, maybe not next year or the year after but in years down the line, for disabled people to face extreme pressure from society.

On reflection, I think that Daniel Johnson’s amendment 4, which suggests a six-month timeframe, is appropriate for the committee to look at. For that reason, I ask the committee to support Daniel Johnson’s amendment and I seek to withdraw amendment 143.

Amendment 143, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendment 4 moved—[Daniel Johnson].

I am interested to explore that a wee bit, because the member is saying that someone could say, “My life is no longer meaningful because I have been diagnosed with something,” even if that person has X number of years to live. For example, motor neurone disease is a cruel, horrible disease, but the prognosis can be very short, or someone can end up with a Stephen Hawking situation where they live for 40 years. If someone is diagnosed with MND and they say after day 2 of that diagnosis, “My life is no longer meaningful,” would the member be open to them being allowed assisted suicide if the bill goes ahead?

I fully support the amendments in the group that have been discussed so far.

At the heart of the bill lies an interesting assumption, which is that every individual has the capacity to make a decision about life and death. However, I would argue that, both within law and within practice, that assumption is not true. Capacity is not constant. It can fluctuate with illness, medication, fear, depression or external pressures, as we have heard from Brian Whittle and, very powerfully, from Pam Duncan-Glancy, but the bill begins with the presumption that everyone is capable of giving fully informed consent to their death.

That is an extraordinary presumption to make in law, and a dangerous one too. When the decision is irreversible—when it involves the deliberate ending of life—we must hold ourselves to the highest possible evidential standard. Anything less would be a profound failure of our duty to protect those whose vulnerability may be obvious to others, even if it is not obvious to themselves.

Amendment 146 strengthens that safeguard. It reverses the default presumption so that an individual must be presumed not to have capacity unless it can be proven on the basis of clear evidence that they do. It also sets a higher bar to “beyond reasonable doubt”, which is clearly understood by lawyers and, I think, most people in the public. It also defines what true capacity means in that context: that someone has a full understanding of the nature and consequences of the decision, an awareness of all available care, treatment and palliative options, and the ability to communicate the decision and the reasoning behind it clearly and voluntarily.

Amendment 146 says exactly what Mr McArthur and others have said that they want to be in the bill. As Pam Duncan-Glancy clearly articulated, for many people with disability, life could become almost not worth living if their care package was taken away or reduced. I could imagine a situation where I had no family, the care package was cut and I could not get dressed in the morning—would I want to continue living, being housebound in my pyjamas 24/7? That is why we have to think very carefully about Pam Duncan-Glancy’s amendments.

Let me be clear that the amendment is not about creating obstacles; it is about ensuring integrity. It ensures that only those who truly comprehend the gravity of what they are deciding can do so. If we are to legislate on life and death, let us at least do it with humility and humanity that recognises how fragile human judgment can be and how permanent death always is.

I move to amendment 147. We have had a lot of discussion around the terminology and what I believe is the vagueness in it. As I said, I believe that that could lead to including people who have not had the appropriate treatment. There is a real risk that we could include people suffering from anorexia nervosa, as Jackie Baillie pointed out, which is a severe and life-threatening mental illness, but one from which recovery is possible. I believe that to treat such a person as terminally ill is not compassionate, but the opposite.

When someone’s judgment is clouded by an illness that distorts their relationship with life and death, surely our duty as a Parliament and society is not to confirm that despair but to offer hope, treatment and care. If the bill’s wording allows those who can recover to access assisted suicide, it fails in its most basic moral duty—to protect life when life can still be saved.

Amendment 147 would ensure that that cannot happen. It makes clear that an illness cannot be classed as terminal if it can be controlled or substantially slowed by medical intervention such that death is not reasonably expected within six months. It also specifies that an illness cannot be considered terminal if it is a result of

“voluntarily stopping eating and drinking.”

Those are not minor technicalities; they are essential safeguards, particularly for those battling anorexia, to ensure that the Parliament does not, however unintentionally, create a legal pathway for suicide among people who could otherwise be treated, supported and restored to health and often live very fulfilling lives. Any law that touches on life and death must draw its boundaries with precision and compassion.

To some extent, amendment 143 is a probing amendment. Does the member recognise that, in the social security legislation that the Parliament passed in the previous session, six months was included in the definition of terminal illness to be used if someone wants to get benefits more quickly? Would you want to set any time limit, if an amendment were lodged at stage 3, or would you see there being no time limit at all?

Will the member reflect on the fact that, if the bill becomes an act, it will be there for generations to come? This kind of attitude can build up not necessarily in some direct way but through TV programmes, newspapers and social media. It might not be absolutely at the heart of what society thinks at the moment, but we could see, over a five or 10-year period, that sort of pressure building on vulnerable individuals, due to things that are reflected in society more widely.

Will the member take an intervention?

Good morning, convener, members of the committee and other members. Thank you for having us at the meeting to discuss some very important amendments. I will speak to amendments 143 and 144.

First, with regard to amendment 143, as the bill stands, the definition of “terminally ill” is extraordinarily broad. It would include individuals who could live not for weeks or months but for years. People who are managing long-term conditions, those who are receiving treatment that stabilises their illness, and people who still have meaningful time ahead of them would all fall within the scope of the bill as it is currently drafted. I do not think that that is what members of the Parliament or, indeed, more importantly, members of the public would imagine when they hear the phrase “assisted dying”. They would think of someone who is in the final stages of their life or who is perhaps days or weeks from death, not someone who still has years to live but is facing difficulty, fear or despair.

If the law is to mean anything, the definition must be clear as the bill proceeds and if it ultimately becomes an act; otherwise, future generations risk the reach of assisted suicide expanding far beyond what advocates publicly claim to intend, and what the member in charge has publicly stated.

This amendment seeks to restore that clarity. It would define “terminally ill” as a condition that,

“in the opinion of two independent registered medical practitioners ... can reasonably be expected to result in the person’s death within three months.”

That is not a technical tightening; it is a moral safeguard. It ensures that, if the Parliament chooses to go down this path, it does so honestly, with the legislation restricted to those who are truly at the end of life and not those who yet have years of life, love and care ahead of them. By supporting the amendment, members will protect the integrity of the bill’s purpose, and they will protect vulnerable people from a profound expansion of what assisted suicide could mean in Scotland. If we cannot agree on that limit—if we cannot even confine assisted suicide to those who are imminently dying—we must ask ourselves what kind of law we are truly making.

With regard to amendment 144, there is, as I said, an alarmingly broad definition in the bill. I have written to the Presiding Officer and to you, convener, about legal issues around that, and I await responses from both of you. However, as the bill is written at the moment, the door to assisted suicide is open for people who have many years—decades—of life ahead of them. As I said, that is not what people think of when they hear the phrase “assisted suicide”. They think of someone who is in the final stages of terminal illness, not someone who is living with mental illness, disability or poverty. Yet, as written, the bill risks crossing that line. It risks sending a message that assisted suicide could be open to someone like me, who is struggling with disability. It opens it to those who are struggling with disadvantage or despair. That is a profound moral error and a betrayal of the very people who need our care and solidarity.

My amendment seeks to put that right. It makes it clear that a person cannot be deemed eligible for assisted suicide if their primary reason for seeking it is a non-terminal condition, such as an eating disorder, an intellectual disability, a mood or anxiety disorder, receipt of disability benefits, loneliness, financial hardship or unsuitable housing. At the same time, the amendment recognises that people may live with those conditions alongside a genuine terminal illness. It therefore would not automatically exclude people with non-terminal conditions from being eligible; it would require only that the driving cause of a request is truly a terminal condition. We heard at stage 1 from members across the chamber that that is what they were seeking to do. The amendment is not about narrowing choice but about protecting meaning and, perhaps most importantly, protecting the most vulnerable in our society.

The amendment would ensure that assisted suicide is not even inadvertently offered as a substitute for care, community or hope. If the state begins to respond to suffering not with support but with death, we will cross the line of the compassionate society that we all want to be part of. I believe that we should not cross that line. This amendment asks us to hold that line with clarity, conscience and compassion.

I move amendment 143.