Chamber and committees

John Andresen mentioned hydrogen storage. How is it stored in practical terms? I guess that communities would not be too happy to have a huge storage facility next to their homes.

Yes.

Actually, I think that they come from Sarah.

Do we know whether we have those facilities in Scotland, or is that something that we would still have to put in place?

So, basically, it would be stored back in rocks.

We have also mentioned that the cost of hydrogen is still a lot higher than it is in other parts of the world. Seventy-five per cent of that is due to electricity costs. The CFDs for floating offshore wind, for example, involve a price of £155 per megawatt hour. How will that cost come down, given that the CFD has the price up so high?

But the CFD prices for offshore wind—floating offshore wind in particular—do not seem to be coming down. In the last round, for example, the price went up significantly, because there were no takers the round before. I am still struggling to understand how we will get the price of electricity down when we are moving more to renewables, and how we will get the price of hydrogen down to be competitive with other countries.

I thank my friend Liam McArthur for having the strength to introduce his bill and for all the work that he has done on it.

Let me start by saying something that I am sure that we can all agree on: we are all going to die, but how we die is something that will be different and personal for us all. We would all like to have a peaceful and painless death, but that is not how it is going to happen for all of us. Some of us will pass away in our sleep, but others may spend their last few days or weeks in agony, praying for the end to come. The bill is about giving people more control over their death—giving them more choice when they are at the end of life, and giving them choice between different kinds of death.

We all have personal stories about why we are supporting or opposing the bill, and I will talk briefly about mine. Before I was elected as an MSP, I had a friend and mentor who was suffering terribly from breast cancer at the end of her life. I would visit her, in her last days, and I could tell how much pain she was in. She asked me to support assisted dying. She knew that it would not help her, but she hated the position that she was in, in which the last days of her life were probably the most painful and hated.

People in such situations have limited choices. They can continue to suffer, as my friend had to do; they might commit suicide, which carries the dangers of criminalising anyone who helps them and of their attempt not working; or they can go to Switzerland. In my friend’s case, the latter option would have meant ending her life sooner than she wanted to, as well as potentially criminalising anyone who helped her, and it would have cost thousands of pounds. Where is the equality in that? It seems that people who can afford it have access to assisted dying, but those who do not must either suffer or break the law.

We must remember that we are debating the bill at stage 1, and that this debate is not like others, in which members are usually whipped by their parties. The bill cannot and will not be railroaded through. If members believe in the general principle of providing dignity and choice to people who are in the final stages of their lives, I urge them to support the bill today. That would allow us to amend its provisions where required, as the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee has recommended, and then to vote on what would be in front of us at stage 3. That is how the Parliament should work. Our processes allow us to put robust legislation in place.

The vote on this bill differs in that members are not being whipped. The whole point of the Parliament is to make laws, which it has done successfully before now. I do not think that we should be scared. We must have faith that the Parliament can do what it is meant to do. We members have a job that we were elected to do. I add that the bill has been almost 20 years in the making. By learning the lessons of the past and considering the multitude of proposals, critiques, analysis and previous debates, we will be able to craft something that will deliver on the wishes of the majority of Scots while still protecting the most vulnerable.

Personally, I do not think that I would ever be able to go through with assisted dying—I would always want to live as long as possible. However, I have never experienced the pain and suffering that some people endure. I would like to have that choice, and the bill is about giving people choices. It is not my place to tell another human being that their suffering is just the way it has to be, or that their excruciating pain is not that bad. In any other circumstance, forcing another individual to endure horrendous pain and suffering would be inhumane, torturous and, in all likelihood, criminal.

I implore members to consider that human factor, because the status quo is cruel and dangerous, and it offers no one the choice of a dignified and peaceful death. Assisted dying has worked in many other countries. Now is the time to see the best of what the Scottish Parliament can do. An assisted dying law would not mean that more people would die; it would mean that fewer people would suffer. If members agree with the majority of our constituents on the principle of assisted dying, they should vote for the bill at stage 1, and let us all work together to improve it as it progresses through the parliamentary stages. Among the words on the mace that sits in front of us is “compassion”. Let us show that we have that compassion.

I fully support the escalation to level 4. I called for that during a members’ business debate just two weeks ago.

Two months ago, I asked the cabinet secretary whether he had confidence in the board. I ask him today whether he has confidence in the chair of NHS Grampian.