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Seòmar agus comataidhean

Official Report: search what was said in Parliament

The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.  

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Dates of parliamentary sessions
  1. Session 1: 12 May 1999 to 31 March 2003
  2. Session 2: 7 May 2003 to 2 April 2007
  3. Session 3: 9 May 2007 to 22 March 2011
  4. Session 4: 11 May 2011 to 23 March 2016
  5. Session 5: 12 May 2016 to 5 May 2021
  6. Current session: 12 May 2021 to 24 November 2024
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Displaying 568 contributions

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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]

Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 19 November 2024

Brian Whittle

We are moving along the line of witnesses to Dr Mills; we keep on adding layers.

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]

Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 19 November 2024

Brian Whittle

During our deliberations, there have been concerns about who would be deemed suitably qualified staff, how safeguards would be maintained and how we would avoid someone seeking several doctors’ opinions until they got the answer that they were looking for. In the first instance, who should lead and who should be involved in providing assisted dying?

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]

Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 19 November 2024

Brian Whittle

You said that the service should be delivered only by highly trained professionals—I would argue that all our healthcare professionals are highly trained. I suppose that it would come down to experience; someone who has just qualified has a different level of experience to someone who has worked in the healthcare profession for 10 or 20 years. From your perspective, Dr Provan, how would we define “highly trained”?

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]

Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 19 November 2024

Brian Whittle

I go back to the initial question: internationally, in countries that have introduced assisted dying, is there any evidence to suggest, or have you looked at any evidence that suggests, that palliative care has been impacted one way or the other?

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]

Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 19 November 2024

Brian Whittle

I will take that theme a bit further and look at the bill’s potential impact on palliative care, which we have looked at previously. Although I do not want to, I feel that I have to mention our evidence session with witnesses from Canada, who had diametrically opposed positions—to say that there was a split in opinion would be an understatement. One of the witnesses claimed that palliative care and the resources for it had improved following the legislation, whereas the other witness claimed the complete opposite. One of the things that they talked about was the impact of deprivation on access to palliative care.

Are there concerns about the bill having a detrimental impact on palliative care, or could it have the opposite effect? I will come to Amy Dalrymple first, as she raised the issue in the first place.

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]

Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 19 November 2024

Brian Whittle

Lastly, Rami Okasha, what would be the impact for the cohort of people who you look after?

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]

Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 19 November 2024

Brian Whittle

Where does the RCN sit on the issue?

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]

Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 19 November 2024

Brian Whittle

Dr Provan and Mr Poolman have alluded to the potential impact on the day-to-day running of our health service, which is under a bit of pressure, as we know. How the proposed bill would impact the running of general medical practice is an added complexity. Dr Provan has suggested that the impact would be detrimental to any GP surgery. Dr Kennedy, will you expand on that?

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]

Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 19 November 2024

Brian Whittle

Where does the Royal Pharmaceutical Society fit into the jigsaw?

Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee [Draft]

Continued Petitions

Meeting date: 13 November 2024

Brian Whittle

You are right that this is an on-going petition; it has been considered over some time. The same issues keep arising, and I currently have six individual casework items open on six different wind farms in the south of Scotland. I will not take too long on this, but the basic thread running through all of them is the inability of communities to be properly heard or to be involved in consultation. I have a whole list.

We considered all of the cases and the public’s response to the building of wind farms or solar farms. In one case, there were 57 against and two for; in the next one, there were 57 against and one for. There was a huge amount of consideration of the impact of the developments on the local environment. There was a huge amount of worry about that, and about the impact of the developments on the value of people’s houses.

When I meet wind farm developers, I always stress that the most important thing that they should do is to consult the local community at the earliest possible point. They all say, “Absolutely, that’s what we’re going to do,” but the overwhelming feeling from reports that I hear and constituency work that I have done is that they avoid doing that. The public believes that, even when there is a local vote against a wind farm, all the developers have to do is refer that to the Scottish Government and it will be passed. The overwhelming feeling is that public views are not heard at all.

I commend the petitioner. As I said, I represent an area with a high density of wind farms and plans for more in future, and there does not seem to be any change in how consultations take place or in the interaction between wind farm developers and local communities. I will end my comments there.