Chamber and committees

Good morning. I am particularly interested in the proposals that the Government had to reform legal aid. The intention was to bring forward proposals in this parliamentary session, but that has not happened and now will not happen. Building on the Evans review, the Government set up a number of working groups; my understanding is that the Law Society withdrew from those groups, and I am keen to understand the Law Society’s motivation and view in doing that.

Aaliya, do you have anything to add on the need for primary legislation?

Do you want to add anything, Hyo Eun Shin?

That was helpful. So, the piece of research is not going to happen.

Finally, I am interested in the real challenges around public debt and the legal options that are open to people to try to get themselves into a better position with the debt that they owe to public agencies. Very often, that will involve a degree of legal advice. I have spoken to firms in my region that do a lot of such work pro bono in order to try to support people, even if that just involves having an initial discussion with a counsellor or whoever about getting into a payment plan. Is that something that you have seen through your work?

I absolutely agree. I was coming to the point that Mr Sweeney alludes to, which is that people who live in poverty often die a poor death. Regardless of the outcome of this evening’s vote and this process, it is incumbent on all of us in the Parliament to continue to have a serious discussion about the provision of palliative care and access to palliative care and dignity at the end of life. In particular, we are collectively failing to properly support our hospices.

At all times in this debate, my approach has been to listen and engage and to respect that there are many deeply held views in favour of changing the law and against doing so. Fundamentally, I have tried to come to my own conclusion by interrogating the evidence that has been provided to me, not least by this Parliament’s Health, Social Care and Sport Committee in its stage 1 report. I am very grateful to colleagues for their work in that regard. My conclusions recognise not only the end-of-life experiences that I have heard about, but the concerns that have been raised with me about the bill—principally, the need to protect the rights of disabled people in society, the risk of coercion and, indeed, the potential for extending, via the courts, the scope of assisted dying.

In the time that is left to me, I will focus on only one of those points—the value that we place on disabled people in our society. Pam Duncan-Glancy outlined her concerns about what the bill will mean in reality for disabled people far more eloquently than I could. However, in my mind at all times in this process there has been an acute sense that we are not debating these measures in an equal society. There is not a level playing field for disabled people, who too often are still seen as—and feel like—a burden. They are too often vulnerable to coercion, even by the very institutions that exist to protect them and all of us.

That was brought to my mind all too acutely during the pandemic. For seven years prior to being elected to this Parliament, I worked for a learning disability charity. With people who have a learning disability, I campaigned for their rights and for the rights of their family carers. I know how important it was to them to have independence and be valued as a member of society. Yet, in the pandemic, in the darkest medical emergency of this generation, people who have a learning disability told me about the do not resuscitate orders that were signed on their behalf, without their knowledge and without the knowledge of their family. That brought home to me very clearly the fact that people who have a disability are not treated the same as other people in our society. We still do not have answers to why that happened.

Without that level playing field and a more equal society, despite all our debates, all the proposed safeguards in the bill, my deep respect for the member in charge and his intentions, and my deep respect for my constituents who, fundamentally, do not share my view about the need for a change in the law, I cannot support the bill tonight.

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate. At this stage of the evening, I am pleased to be following so many considered, passionate and powerful speeches by colleagues from all parts of the chamber.

This is a serious bill and a serious debate. In many ways, it is one of the most serious issues that we will deal with in this session of Parliament. It is the culmination of four years of debate in this session and of a wider debate long before that. We have heard much of that debate rehearsed this evening.

Like colleagues, I pay tribute to Liam McArthur. The manner in which he has steered the passage of the bill has been thoroughly decent, collegiate and patient. His contribution in opening the debate today continued in that vein.

Everyone in the Parliament and, indeed, across the nation approaches this debate with their own experience of and encounter with death, because death comes to us all and touches us all, no matter who we are. Seamus Heaney wrote:

“death is not easily
escaped from by anyone:
all of us, with souls, earth-dwellers
and children of men, must make our way
to a destination already ordained”.

The question, and the debate that we are having, is about how we die. I have sought to encounter and listen to my constituents and their stories. I think particularly of people such as Caroline, who came to see me and made me stop in my tracks as she spoke with passion and emotion about the death that her loved one experienced. It was a difficult death, in which pain was present, and she felt that the option of assisted dying would have made that process far better not only for her loved one, but for her.

I recognise the work of Marie Curie. Last year, I was very pleased to bring to the chamber a debate on “Dying in the Margins”. That exhibition, which we have heard about before this evening, sought to show to the world the conditions in which people come to the end of life in our society. It struck me that, in many ways, even in hospice care, we are already failing to allow people to have a good death. There is a failure to support people by adapting their properties so that they can die well, to allow people to access social services and to provide that wider end-of-life support.

We have referred to the committee’s work on reviewing the structure of legal aid. The Government has also committed to a review of the fees and a wider review of the legal aid system—we started to cover that in our conversation this morning.

I have two questions, the first of which is about the pace of change and the inquiries. Is all of that happening quickly enough? Secondly, what broad issues do you want to see captured in any system reform? I appreciate that it is big question, but it would be useful to get a sense of everyone’s view on it.

Does Sophie Berry have anything to add from the Govan Law Centre’s point of view?

I will ask about some issues that we have started to touch on. The committee is interested in the availability of solicitors for this particular work and for legal aid work. It will be useful to get a sense of whether there is a lack of solicitors who are available to take on legal aid work in this area or whether there is a more general problem. The Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee has heard about a general lack of legal aid solicitors. It would be useful to hear your comments on the subject.