Official Report 785KB pdf
The third item on our agenda is consideration of testimonies from individuals who are living with a terminal illness, as part of the committee’s stage 1 scrutiny of the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill.
Since it commenced taking oral evidence on the bill last year, the committee has also engaged with a number of organisations that are involved in providing front-line care and support to individuals who have a terminal illness. The purpose of that engagement was to explore whether any such individuals would be willing to contribute personal testimonies about their experience and their views on the bill.
Throughout that process, the committee has made every effort to take a sensitive approach to ensure that the autonomy of the individuals concerned is respected, that they are suitably supported and that any associated practical barriers to participation are appropriately addressed. I place on record the committee’s sincere gratitude to Alzheimer Scotland, Age Scotland and Marie Curie Scotland for the helpful and thoughtful way in which they have engaged with the committee on such a sensitive topic. I make it clear that those organisations take a neutral position on the issue of assisted dying and neither support nor oppose the bill.
As a result of our engagement, the committee has received two testimonies from individuals who are living with a terminal illness, which have been published on the committee’s web pages. I express my sincere thanks to both individuals for their important contributions to the committee’s scrutiny of the bill at stage 1, as well as to individuals who have contacted me directly as convener of the committee or as a constituency MSP, to share their views and experiences.
There is now an opportunity for other committee members to put on record some of their thoughts.
I add my thanks to the individuals who wrote in and to all the constituents and other folk who have contacted me personally in my role as a constituency member. I have had representations from people with differing views. All of that is really helpful as we look through the evidence and make a decision on what is a really important matter. Thanks to them all.
Convener, I agree with you and Joe FitzPatrick about the amount of contact from constituents, as a lot of people in the South Scotland region have contacted me. In addition, from reading the evidence to the committee, I know the commitment that people have and I know that it is, obviously, a very serious issue. People care deeply about the process, the debate that we are having and the information. It is absolutely necessary that I put on record my thanks to everybody who has been involved. I will continue to make sure that I pay full attention to the issues as we go forward.
I reiterate my thanks to the wide variety of people who have made representations on a challenging area of potential legislation. The more that we have delved into the complexities of the issue, the more fraught the considerations have become. In the correspondence that the committee received, I noted a story of someone whose life had been set on a negative trajectory because of dementia, which led to their early retirement. That brought to the fore the wider implications of how we manage people’s healthcare in a wider setting. Similarly, if people have a sense that they are a burden on their friends and family, it might mean that they are inclined to support assisted dying, but it also raises questions of coercion. That is the moral conundrum that we are trying to contend with. Representations that we have heard reflect many of the difficulties that we face in trying to find a way through to the right course of action.
I thank the individuals who engaged with the committee on the issue and who have sent representations to individual MSPs. I also thank the clerking team for their efforts to engage with those who have living experience of the situation, to try to ensure that their voices could be heard, which is not an easy task. That was one of the things that I felt was missing from the evidence that we took, but it was not for want of trying by the clerking team.
I remind members of my entry in the register of members’ interests, which states that I am a practising NHS GP and the chairman of the medical advisory group on the bill. It is incredibly brave for any individual to be willing to come forward and put their thoughts on record in a parliamentary setting. Personally, I take that seriously in my reflections on the bill, so I thank the individuals who have done so, as well as the organisations that have engaged with the committee on an incredibly difficult topic. I am sure that we have all had multiple people contacting us on behalf of those who are on both sides of the debate.
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