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Would you or the Government like to see anything in the bill about how the service would operate?

Given your previous answers, you might not be able to answer some of my other questions. However, I would like some comment about the NHS’s relationship to the potential service model should the bill become law. For example, should it be a separate service in the NHS or integrated into existing services?

Should there be a register of people who are trained to perform assisted dying and are willing to participate in it, with a sort of opt-in system?

This might be very stupid, but I assume that, if you had a complaint and you were an English resident with a Scottish family member, you would make the complaint in Scotland rather than in England.

Okay. Thank you very much.

I declare an interest as a practising national health service general practitioner and as chair of the medical advisory group on the bill.

I have a couple of questions, the first of which is on coercion. You mentioned what might happen after the event. How would you unpick the following scenario? Say that someone who has decided that they want to go through with an assisted death has a supportive family member, as we hope would be the case, but after the event, another family member—perhaps a distant cousin, for example—says, “I’m against the idea of assisted dying, and you’ve clearly coerced because you have been so supportive.” Would you be open to multiple complaints coming through?

I want to ask about some evidence that we heard from the previous panel. We were told that the suicide rate among people who have terminal illnesses is 2.4 times higher than it is among the rest of the population, and that 591 people a week die in pain despite receiving the best palliative care. What is your response to those figures? What should we be doing?

Before we move on, can I ask, for clarity, whether you think that there any circumstances at all in which it would be ethically acceptable?

To follow up on the stat that you just gave us about the suicide rate being 2.4 times higher for people who have a terminal illness, do you have any information on how they commit suicide?

I have a final question. How can a balance be struck between supporting innovation in the food and feed industries and ensuring sufficient consumer protection, particularly in the context of a faster approval process for new products?