Chamber and committees

Will the member take an intervention?

I have found this debate hard, so I have no right whatsoever to offer any judgments about the conclusions that other members have so carefully reached and still more carefully argued tonight, not least Mr McArthur. For all of us on both sides of this debate, profound personal experiences and huge questions of principle are engaged—although, as Stephen Kerr rightly said, we are not debating a principle tonight. We did that at stage 1. We are now debating the bill.

I tried to support amendments that I thought might introduce safeguards, but I avoided backing wrecking amendments, as I saw them, that might have landed the bill in court. After all of that, however, I am still looking at a bill that genuinely troubles me. One of the reasons is that, as other members have mentioned, there are significant holes in it. I realise that there were legal reasons why Parliament had to remove the provisions that guaranteed health professionals a right not to participate. The best hope now is that those gaps will eventually be filled in by Westminster. That prospect clearly reassures some members but, notably, it does not reassure the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland.

I was personally surprised that Parliament did not accept an institutional right to opt out. Like Mr Hepburn, I was also genuinely taken aback when Parliament rejected some of Mr Johnson’s amendments. They would have prohibited doctors, rather than patients, from initiating a conversation about assisted dying. For older patients from many backgrounds, a doctor is still an authority figure, and some people have told me that they simply lack the confidence to ever contradict a doctor.

I recognise that the bill is founded on the vital principle of personal autonomy. For me, however, it exhibits an idealised vision of that autonomy. It pictures a world in which people exercise choices without any external forces ever being placed on them. I think of the woman in a controlling relationship or the person who has the unspoken fear that living out his last years in a care home might cost his children the family house.

The bill also seems to assume that people seek out the help and support that they need in their lives to allow them to be assertive about their rights. In rural and other traditional communities where the desire to save face and avoid being talked about can be powerful forces, such an assumption is, believe me, often ill-founded.

Clearly, families, doctors and nurses already have to wrestle with deeply distressing end-of-life decisions. I am in awe of the members who have been able to speak so openly and movingly of those experiences. The manner of some deaths raises questions about human suffering to which I offer no trite answers.

However, I have to recall the advice that is often given to legislators that hard cases make bad law. That is definitely not to belittle the terrible hardness of the situations of which we have been speaking tonight and on which we now have to legislate; rather, it is to remember that our laws generally have a wider application than we envisaged.

We now have a bill that is opposed by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in Scotland, numerous former presidents of the royal colleges of physicians and surgeons in both Glasgow and Edinburgh, the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland and Inclusion Scotland.

The Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, meanwhile, has said that the bill

“infringes the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities”

Anyone who feels that they can see past objections such as those needs to feel very sure about the bill. I am not, and so, respectfully, I will be voting against it.

21:45

I have found this debate hard, so I have no right whatsoever to offer any judgments about the conclusions that other members have so carefully reached and still more carefully argued tonight, not least Mr McArthur. For all of us on both sides of this debate, profound personal experiences and huge questions of principle are engaged—although, as Stephen Kerr rightly said, we are not debating a principle tonight. We did that at stage 1. We are now debating the bill.

I tried to support amendments that I thought might introduce safeguards, but I avoided backing wrecking amendments, as I saw them, that might have landed the bill in court. After all of that, however, I am still looking at a bill that genuinely troubles me. One of the reasons is that, as other members have mentioned, there are significant holes in it. I realise that there were legal reasons why Parliament had to remove the provisions that guaranteed health professionals a right not to participate. The best hope now is that those gaps will eventually be filled in by Westminster. That prospect clearly reassures some members but, notably, it does not reassure the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland.

I was personally surprised that Parliament did not accept an institutional right to opt out. Like Mr Hepburn, I was also genuinely taken aback when Parliament rejected some of Mr Johnson’s amendments. They would have prohibited doctors, rather than patients, from initiating a conversation about assisted dying. For older patients from many backgrounds, a doctor is still an authority figure, and some people have told me that they simply lack the confidence to ever contradict a doctor.

I recognise that the bill is founded on the vital principle of personal autonomy. For me, however, it exhibits an idealised vision of that autonomy. It pictures a world in which people exercise choices without any external forces ever being placed on them. I think of the woman in a controlling relationship or the person who has the unspoken fear that living out his last years in a care home might cost his children the family house.

The bill also seems to assume that people seek out the help and support that they need in their lives to allow them to be assertive about their rights. In rural and other traditional communities where the desire to save face and avoid being talked about can be powerful forces, such an assumption is, believe me, often ill-founded.

Clearly, families, doctors and nurses already have to wrestle with deeply distressing end-of-life decisions. I am in awe of the members who have been able to speak so openly and movingly of those experiences. The manner of some deaths raises questions about human suffering to which I offer no trite answers.

However, I have to recall the advice that is often given to legislators that hard cases make bad law. That is definitely not to belittle the terrible hardness of the situations of which we have been speaking tonight and on which we now have to legislate; rather, it is to remember that our laws generally have a wider application than we envisaged.

We now have a bill that is opposed by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in Scotland, numerous former presidents of the royal colleges of physicians and surgeons in both Glasgow and Edinburgh, the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland and Inclusion Scotland.

The Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, meanwhile, has said that the bill

“infringes the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities”

Anyone who feels that they can see past objections such as those needs to feel very sure about the bill. I am not, and so, respectfully, I will be voting against it.

21:45

I have found this debate hard, so I have no right whatsoever to offer any judgments about the conclusions that other members have so carefully reached and still more carefully argued tonight, not least Mr McArthur. For all of us on both sides of this debate, profound personal experiences and huge questions of principle are engaged—although, as Stephen Kerr rightly said, we are not debating a principle tonight. We did that at stage 1. We are now debating the bill.

I tried to support amendments that I thought might introduce safeguards, but I avoided backing wrecking amendments, as I saw them, that might have landed the bill in court. After all of that, however, I am still looking at a bill that genuinely troubles me. One of the reasons is that, as other members have mentioned, there are significant holes in it. I realise that there were legal reasons why Parliament had to remove the provisions that guaranteed health professionals a right not to participate. The best hope now is that those gaps will eventually be filled in by Westminster. That prospect clearly reassures some members but, notably, it does not reassure the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland.

I was personally surprised that Parliament did not accept an institutional right to opt out. Like Mr Hepburn, I was also genuinely taken aback when Parliament rejected some of Mr Johnson’s amendments. They would have prohibited doctors, rather than patients, from initiating a conversation about assisted dying. For older patients from many backgrounds, a doctor is still an authority figure, and some people have told me that they simply lack the confidence to ever contradict a doctor.

I recognise that the bill is founded on the vital principle of personal autonomy. For me, however, it exhibits an idealised vision of that autonomy. It pictures a world in which people exercise choices without any external forces ever being placed on them. I think of the woman in a controlling relationship or the person who has the unspoken fear that living out his last years in a care home might cost his children the family house.

The bill also seems to assume that people seek out the help and support that they need in their lives to allow them to be assertive about their rights. In rural and other traditional communities where the desire to save face and avoid being talked about can be powerful forces, such an assumption is, believe me, often ill-founded.

Clearly, families, doctors and nurses already have to wrestle with deeply distressing end-of-life decisions. I am in awe of the members who have been able to speak so openly and movingly of those experiences. The manner of some deaths raises questions about human suffering to which I offer no trite answers.

However, I have to recall the advice that is often given to legislators that hard cases make bad law. That is definitely not to belittle the terrible hardness of the situations of which we have been speaking tonight and on which we now have to legislate; rather, it is to remember that our laws generally have a wider application than we envisaged.

We now have a bill that is opposed by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in Scotland, numerous former presidents of the royal colleges of physicians and surgeons in both Glasgow and Edinburgh, the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland and Inclusion Scotland.

The Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, meanwhile, has said that the bill

“infringes the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities”

Anyone who feels that they can see past objections such as those needs to feel very sure about the bill. I am not, and so, respectfully, I will be voting against it.

21:45

I have found this debate hard, so I have no right whatsoever to offer any judgments about the conclusions that other members have so carefully reached and still more carefully argued tonight, not least Mr McArthur. For all of us on both sides of this debate, profound personal experiences and huge questions of principle are engaged—although, as Stephen Kerr rightly said, we are not debating a principle tonight. We did that at stage 1. We are now debating the bill.

I tried to support amendments that I thought might introduce safeguards, but I avoided backing wrecking amendments, as I saw them, that might have landed the bill in court. After all of that, however, I am still looking at a bill that genuinely troubles me. One of the reasons is that, as other members have mentioned, there are significant holes in it. I realise that there were legal reasons why Parliament had to remove the provisions that guaranteed health professionals a right not to participate. The best hope now is that those gaps will eventually be filled in by Westminster. That prospect clearly reassures some members but, notably, it does not reassure the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland.

I was personally surprised that Parliament did not accept an institutional right to opt out. Like Mr Hepburn, I was also genuinely taken aback when Parliament rejected some of Mr Johnson’s amendments. They would have prohibited doctors, rather than patients, from initiating a conversation about assisted dying. For older patients from many backgrounds, a doctor is still an authority figure, and some people have told me that they simply lack the confidence to ever contradict a doctor.

I recognise that the bill is founded on the vital principle of personal autonomy. For me, however, it exhibits an idealised vision of that autonomy. It pictures a world in which people exercise choices without any external forces ever being placed on them. I think of the woman in a controlling relationship or the person who has the unspoken fear that living out his last years in a care home might cost his children the family house.

The bill also seems to assume that people seek out the help and support that they need in their lives to allow them to be assertive about their rights. In rural and other traditional communities where the desire to save face and avoid being talked about can be powerful forces, such an assumption is, believe me, often ill-founded.

Clearly, families, doctors and nurses already have to wrestle with deeply distressing end-of-life decisions. I am in awe of the members who have been able to speak so openly and movingly of those experiences. The manner of some deaths raises questions about human suffering to which I offer no trite answers.

However, I have to recall the advice that is often given to legislators that hard cases make bad law. That is definitely not to belittle the terrible hardness of the situations of which we have been speaking tonight and on which we now have to legislate; rather, it is to remember that our laws generally have a wider application than we envisaged.

We now have a bill that is opposed by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in Scotland, numerous former presidents of the royal colleges of physicians and surgeons in both Glasgow and Edinburgh, the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland and Inclusion Scotland.

The Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, meanwhile, has said that the bill

“infringes the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities”

Anyone who feels that they can see past objections such as those needs to feel very sure about the bill. I am not, and so, respectfully, I will be voting against it.

21:45

I have found this debate hard, so I have no right whatsoever to offer any judgments about the conclusions that other members have so carefully reached and still more carefully argued tonight, not least Mr McArthur. For all of us on both sides of this debate, profound personal experiences and huge questions of principle are engaged—although, as Stephen Kerr rightly said, we are not debating a principle tonight. We did that at stage 1. We are now debating the bill.

I tried to support amendments that I thought might introduce safeguards, but I avoided backing wrecking amendments, as I saw them, that might have landed the bill in court. After all of that, however, I am still looking at a bill that genuinely troubles me. One of the reasons is that, as other members have mentioned, there are significant holes in it. I realise that there were legal reasons why Parliament had to remove the provisions that guaranteed health professionals a right not to participate. The best hope now is that those gaps will eventually be filled in by Westminster. That prospect clearly reassures some members but, notably, it does not reassure the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland.

I was personally surprised that Parliament did not accept an institutional right to opt out. Like Mr Hepburn, I was also genuinely taken aback when Parliament rejected some of Mr Johnson’s amendments. They would have prohibited doctors, rather than patients, from initiating a conversation about assisted dying. For older patients from many backgrounds, a doctor is still an authority figure, and some people have told me that they simply lack the confidence to ever contradict a doctor.

I recognise that the bill is founded on the vital principle of personal autonomy. For me, however, it exhibits an idealised vision of that autonomy. It pictures a world in which people exercise choices without any external forces ever being placed on them. I think of the woman in a controlling relationship or the person who has the unspoken fear that living out his last years in a care home might cost his children the family house.

The bill also seems to assume that people seek out the help and support that they need in their lives to allow them to be assertive about their rights. In rural and other traditional communities where the desire to save face and avoid being talked about can be powerful forces, such an assumption is, believe me, often ill-founded.

Clearly, families, doctors and nurses already have to wrestle with deeply distressing end-of-life decisions. I am in awe of the members who have been able to speak so openly and movingly of those experiences. The manner of some deaths raises questions about human suffering to which I offer no trite answers.

However, I have to recall the advice that is often given to legislators that hard cases make bad law. That is definitely not to belittle the terrible hardness of the situations of which we have been speaking tonight and on which we now have to legislate; rather, it is to remember that our laws generally have a wider application than we envisaged.

We now have a bill that is opposed by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in Scotland, numerous former presidents of the royal colleges of physicians and surgeons in both Glasgow and Edinburgh, the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland and Inclusion Scotland.

The Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, meanwhile, has said that the bill

“infringes the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities”

Anyone who feels that they can see past objections such as those needs to feel very sure about the bill. I am not, and so, respectfully, I will be voting against it.

21:45

I have found this debate hard, so I have no right whatsoever to offer any judgments about the conclusions that other members have so carefully reached and still more carefully argued tonight, not least Mr McArthur. For all of us on both sides of this debate, profound personal experiences and huge questions of principle are engaged—although, as Stephen Kerr rightly said, we are not debating a principle tonight. We did that at stage 1. We are now debating the bill.

I tried to support amendments that I thought might introduce safeguards, but I avoided backing wrecking amendments, as I saw them, that might have landed the bill in court. After all of that, however, I am still looking at a bill that genuinely troubles me. One of the reasons is that, as other members have mentioned, there are significant holes in it. I realise that there were legal reasons why Parliament had to remove the provisions that guaranteed health professionals a right not to participate. The best hope now is that those gaps will eventually be filled in by Westminster. That prospect clearly reassures some members but, notably, it does not reassure the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland.

I was personally surprised that Parliament did not accept an institutional right to opt out. Like Mr Hepburn, I was also genuinely taken aback when Parliament rejected some of Mr Johnson’s amendments. They would have prohibited doctors, rather than patients, from initiating a conversation about assisted dying. For older patients from many backgrounds, a doctor is still an authority figure, and some people have told me that they simply lack the confidence to ever contradict a doctor.

I recognise that the bill is founded on the vital principle of personal autonomy. For me, however, it exhibits an idealised vision of that autonomy. It pictures a world in which people exercise choices without any external forces ever being placed on them. I think of the woman in a controlling relationship or the person who has the unspoken fear that living out his last years in a care home might cost his children the family house.

The bill also seems to assume that people seek out the help and support that they need in their lives to allow them to be assertive about their rights. In rural and other traditional communities where the desire to save face and avoid being talked about can be powerful forces, such an assumption is, believe me, often ill-founded.

Clearly, families, doctors and nurses already have to wrestle with deeply distressing end-of-life decisions. I am in awe of the members who have been able to speak so openly and movingly of those experiences. The manner of some deaths raises questions about human suffering to which I offer no trite answers.

However, I have to recall the advice that is often given to legislators that hard cases make bad law. That is definitely not to belittle the terrible hardness of the situations of which we have been speaking tonight and on which we now have to legislate; rather, it is to remember that our laws generally have a wider application than we envisaged.

We now have a bill that is opposed by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in Scotland, numerous former presidents of the royal colleges of physicians and surgeons in both Glasgow and Edinburgh, the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland and Inclusion Scotland.

The Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, meanwhile, has said that the bill

“infringes the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities”

Anyone who feels that they can see past objections such as those needs to feel very sure about the bill. I am not, and so, respectfully, I will be voting against it.

21:45

In my constituency, more than 86 per cent of homes are off the gas grid, and some 46 per cent are heated with oil. Given that critics have warned that Keir Starmer’s support package works out at around £33 per affected household—as the cabinet secretary also mentioned—does the cabinet secretary agree that that will be little consolation for the thousands of people whose fuel prices have doubled overnight? Does the cabinet secretary also agree that that cannot be the end of any action taken by the UK Government, given that energy policy is reserved?

I have found this debate hard, so I have no right whatsoever to offer any judgments about the conclusions that other members have so carefully reached and still more carefully argued tonight, not least Mr McArthur. For all of us on both sides of this debate, profound personal experiences and huge questions of principle are engaged—although, as Stephen Kerr rightly said, we are not debating a principle tonight. We did that at stage 1. We are now debating the bill.

I tried to support amendments that I thought might introduce safeguards, but I avoided backing wrecking amendments, as I saw them, that might have landed the bill in court. After all of that, however, I am still looking at a bill that genuinely troubles me. One of the reasons is that, as other members have mentioned, there are significant holes in it. I realise that there were legal reasons why Parliament had to remove the provisions that guaranteed health professionals a right not to participate. The best hope now is that those gaps will eventually be filled in by Westminster. That prospect clearly reassures some members but, notably, it does not reassure the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland.

I was personally surprised that Parliament did not accept an institutional right to opt out. Like Mr Hepburn, I was also genuinely taken aback when Parliament rejected some of Mr Johnson’s amendments. They would have prohibited doctors, rather than patients, from initiating a conversation about assisted dying. For older patients from many backgrounds, a doctor is still an authority figure, and some people have told me that they simply lack the confidence to ever contradict a doctor.

I recognise that the bill is founded on the vital principle of personal autonomy. For me, however, it exhibits an idealised vision of that autonomy. It pictures a world in which people exercise choices without any external forces ever being placed on them. I think of the woman in a controlling relationship or the person who has the unspoken fear that living out his last years in a care home might cost his children the family house.

The bill also seems to assume that people seek out the help and support that they need in their lives to allow them to be assertive about their rights. In rural and other traditional communities where the desire to save face and avoid being talked about can be powerful forces, such an assumption is, believe me, often ill-founded.

Clearly, families, doctors and nurses already have to wrestle with deeply distressing end-of-life decisions. I am in awe of the members who have been able to speak so openly and movingly of those experiences. The manner of some deaths raises questions about human suffering to which I offer no trite answers.

However, I have to recall the advice that is often given to legislators that hard cases make bad law. That is definitely not to belittle the terrible hardness of the situations of which we have been speaking tonight and on which we now have to legislate; rather, it is to remember that our laws generally have a wider application than we envisaged.

We now have a bill that is opposed by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in Scotland, numerous former presidents of the royal colleges of physicians and surgeons in both Glasgow and Edinburgh, the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland and Inclusion Scotland.

The Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, meanwhile, has said that the bill

“infringes the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities”

Anyone who feels that they can see past objections such as those needs to feel very sure about the bill. I am not, and so, respectfully, I will be voting against it.

21:45

I welcome the Scottish Government’s work to support households and families across Scotland with the cost of living, in stark contrast, it would seem, to the inaction of the UK Labour Government. Does the cabinet secretary recognise that, for many island households in places such as Uist, soaring heating costs are now being compounded by other problems, such as the present unavailability of petrol, and that all that is yet more evidence of why Scotland should have control over our energy policy?