Chamber and committees

The bill is important to people across Scotland, including my constituents, and I am grateful to everyone who has contacted me about it.

Assisted dying already exists for people who have the financial means to access it, but that choice is not available to most Scots. Denied access to safe and legal assisted dying, hundreds of terminally ill people in the UK end their lives each year, and many more attempt to do so.

Robert Easton was a retired firefighter from Hamilton. Dying with pancreatic cancer, Robert desperately wanted choice. He considered Switzerland, where assisted dying is legal, but cost and other barriers ruled it out. That led him to research ways to end his own life.

Some of the methods were brutal, says Robert’s daughter, Joanne Easton, who has come to Parliament today. Joanne told me:

“Dying people should not be forced to consider going into the woods with a length of rope. They should not have to think about stepping in front of trains. It took him three weeks to die, in hospital then hospice. It was so drawn-out. I thought; I need to get him drugs. I would have done anything for him. But it was too risky; I didn’t know what would happen.”

I was moved to learn that, before he died, Robert sold his motorbike and gave the money to the hospice.

Like this bill, his story is not about palliative care versus assisted dying; it is about choice, dignity and person-centred care at the end of life. Joanne says that she will regret for the rest of her life that her dad was not given the choice that he wanted.

Sadly, even with universal access to hospice care in Scotland, hundreds of Scots a year would still suffer with immense pain as they die. Four in 10 Scots have seen a loved one suffer in that way.

I believe that the status quo is unfair, unsafe and unregulated and that it is failing dying Scots. Therefore, I agree with the bill’s policy memorandum that

“an individual’s personal autonomy to decide on their medical care, and how their life should end in situations of terminal illness, should be protected in law”.

In a compelling letter to MSPs, Rhona Baillie, chief executive officer of the Prince and Princess of Wales hospice in Glasgow, explains her view that, rather than being a replacement for excellent palliative care, assisted dying is a potential addition to the options that are available to those who face terminal illness. This position is not one of advocacy or opposition, but of commitment to patient-centred care. I agree with Rhona Baillie that the discussion around assisted dying should focus not solely on clinician opinion but on ensuring that people have informed, compassionate choices at the end of life.

There is a solid majority of public support in every constituency, including among disabled people, for a compassionate assisted dying law, so should the bill not be allowed to proceed to the amending stages for further scrutiny?

Liam McArthur has prosecuted the case for the bill in a respectful and collaborative manner, and I hope that members take the opportunity to work with him at stage 2.

I support Liam McArthur’s proposal to amend the bill to raise the minimum age to 18 and I welcome the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee report’s recommendation for clarity on some matters.

The bill rightly contains provisions that would make it an offence to coerce or pressure a terminally ill adult into an assisted death. I agree with Hospice UK that nobody should ever feel that they have to choose an assisted death because of a real or imagined fear of not receiving the care that they need. Whether or not the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill proceeds, I support calls from Marie Curie Scotland for the recognition and delivery of a right to palliative care. End-of-life care must be properly funded, and charitable hospices must be financially sustainable.

I do not know whether I would choose an assisted death for me, but I do not want to deny others that choice, and that is why I will vote for the bill tonight.

Thank you very much, convener, and good afternoon. I begin with a heartfelt “thank you” to you, convener, and to all the committee for your extensive and thoughtful work. You have been considering the petition for quite some time. On behalf of the petitioner, Ann Stark, who is here today with her husband, Gerry, I want to record the family’s gratitude to you as well as my thanks to them for the personal sacrifices that they have made in pursuing the petition—as always, inspired by their much-loved and much-missed son, Richard. From your summary, convener, it is clear that the progress that has been made would not have been possible without the petition and the committee’s work, so I offer a genuine “thank you”.

I know that a lot of work has happened behind the scenes, but I think that there has been significant progress since the last meeting at which the petition was discussed, in May last year. Some real movement has occurred. However, it is quite an honest reflection from you, convener, that we are now at a difficult crossroads in relation to both the time that we have left in this session of Parliament and, given the complex nature of the matter, the fact that, although we have had some clarity, we still do not really know who in Government is taking the lead on the issue and where responsibility for it lies. In your letter to the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health last year, you told her that the committee had been quite

“struck by the lack of clear ownership over policy, direction and decision-making across postmortem services in Scotland.”

We have had a better understanding of the Lord Advocate’s role, which is unique, but it is still clear that no one organisation is taking responsibility for addressing concerns or leading on improvements. In fact, at one point, the Lord Advocate passed the matter back to the committee. The petition is relevant and essential—that remains the case.

I will touch on some of the progress that has been made. Your summary was very helpful, convener, so I will not repeat those points. I have become aware, through Ann Stark’s direct meetings with the Lord Advocate, that there will be a visit to the coroner’s office in Lancashire next Friday, 2 May, which is really good news. I am not sighted on the detail of who will be included. Ideally, the committee would have been represented, but I do not know whether that is still possible. I think that that is a bit of a breakthrough, because we have always felt that Scotland has been lagging behind and has been an outlier—not in a positive way—in relation to the choice and modernisation that we have seen in other parts of the UK and the world. The committee could ask for an update on the scope of that meeting.

We also believe that a pilot scheme involving the use of scanners is about to be embarked on. We understand that the Lord Advocate was going to update the committee, but I am not sure whether that has happened ahead of today’s meeting. It feels as though there is more work to be done on that.

Beyond the work of this committee, the Criminal Justice Committee has taken a keen interest in the issue. The annual report for 2022-23 of His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prosecution in Scotland made a number of recommendations, and—similarly to your work, convener—it reflects the fragmented nature of pathology services in Scotland.

Let me bring us back to why that matters. Ann and Gerry Stark have had a terrible loss, which was made worse by the trauma of having to deal with the system and the services, of which there are many. There was a lack of communication with the family and a lack of compassion around sample retention, as it was a journey of discovery to have Richard’s samples returned to the family. It feels as though we are making progress on scanners, although there is work to be done.

The committee could do further work on the Human Tissue (Scotland) Act 2006. I do not think that the Scottish Government has given proper reasoning for its not supporting any change to the law. Why is it that next of kin in England and Wales have choices, including about reuniting samples with the body prior to the body being released for funeral and about samples being returned to the family for a separate funeral at the appropriate time, but those choices are not available in Scotland? There has been progress in Ireland during the past couple of years. I do not think that the minister, Jenni Minto, has given a proper reason for that in her response, so it would be useful to probe the matter further.

It is for the First Minister to organise his Government and ensure that there are no gaps in ministerial responsibilities. The minister told the committee that she has responsibility for hospital-arranged post-mortem examinations, and I believe that the First Minister has said that there will be a light-touch reshuffle due to circumstances, so the issue could be considered by the Government at that point. However, it is not clear whether all of the work on the co-design of what the future of pathology in Scotland should look like sits within Ms Minto’s portfolio or whether there is a role for Angela Constance, as part of her portfolio. The Government needs to put that in writing to this committee and to the Criminal Justice Committee.

This continues to be a matter of importance not just for Ann and Gerry, but for all of our constituents. When I checked earlier this morning, more than 3,400 people had signed Ann’s petition. It was good that the convener was able to raise it with the First Minister at the recent meeting of the Conveners Group. I noted the First Minister’s answer and the follow-up letter. It is good that Government is beginning to engage, but there is still a lack of detail.

That convinces me that it would be helpful to keep the petition open, given that we are coming into the final year of the Parliament and there is interest among a number of MSPs and at least one other committee, and given that the Scottish Government is beginning to show interest and understands that there needs to be change. The Government has been quite vague and non-committal about what that change should look like, and, if more written and oral evidence could be taken, the committee is well placed to do that.

I will conclude by saying that we have not had a full update on the visit to the coroner’s office in Lancashire or what the scanner pilot scheme would look like. If the Lord Advocate has not written to the committee on that, the committee could follow that up.

We want to send a signal to people across Scotland that, where there are gaps in legislation or policy, there is a place in the Parliament where people can come and have their experiences heard and change can happen. We have made a lot of progress, but there is still a bit of a journey ahead. I would be grateful for the committee’s on-going interest in the matter, because there is more to be done.

I am grateful to Tess White for taking the intervention. Can she tell members why her party opposed an equal right of appeal that would have given communities the same rights as developers?

Will the member take an intervention?

Does the minister recognise that referring to communities as the “third party” in decision making is really at the root of the problem? The campaign for equal rights of appeal is about treating communities as equal partners. Does the minister recognise why I say that?

It is important that we have robust environmental impact assessments. Tess White might know that, in a previous life, I was a chartered town planner, so I will be happy to have a longer discussion with her on that aspect. I am glad that she has intervened on me, because it allows me to underline the point that I made in my intervention on her earlier, about the imbalance in our planning system. We do not have a level playing field, which is why my question to her on equalising the right of appeal goes to the heart of the debate. My colleague Sarah Boyack, who is nodding from the Labour front bench, is a fellow former town planner—perhaps we are responsible for the current shortfall in practising planners in this country. These are critical debates, and it is absolutely up to the Government to get this issue right. If it will not lead on that, in the next parliamentary session we will need a Government that will do so.

Deputy Presiding Officer, I do not know whether I am getting time back or not, so I will have to race through the rest of my contribution.

It is great that two of the Parliament’s committees are focusing on the issue. Last week, at the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, I was able to put questions to Dr Richard Dixon from Environmental Standards Scotland. I was concerned to hear Dr Dixon, whom I am sure the Government respects, say that

“the Government produced a really shoddy secondary paper that went into environmental courts and why it does not want one, but it was still not very convincing.”

He said that creating an environmental court is one way that the Government could accelerate towards Aarhus compliance but that the Government seemed

“desperate not to do that.”

To me, that is inexplicable. He said that

“The original consultation on the governance review hardly mentioned an environmental court and dismissed the idea without any evidence.”—[Official Report, Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, 25 March 2025; c 47.]

I would love to hear the reason for that.

This issue matters to my local community. We have had to fight against speculative applications for incinerators, so I pay tribute to the Dovesdale action group and to my constituents in Whitehill.

I also thank members who have supported my call for an ecocide law in Scotland, because we need system change. It is not about picking out individual locations and types of application.

We need to make sure that our systems work for people and the planet, and Aarhus compliance should be at the heart of that. Reputationally, this is damaging to the Government, but it is also damaging to Scotland, and we need urgency from the Government. The Government will get backing from the chamber, but it needs to come up with something that is credible.

It was good to hear the First Minister speaking today about the importance of the rule of law. Does the minister agree that access to justice is the ultimate guarantee of the rule of law and that, rather than just progress on the Aarhus convention, we need full compliance?

We are here because Scotland is clearly in breach of the Aarhus convention, which is denying Scots access to environmental justice.

I believe that this is a vital debate. Scotland is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, and we are simply not doing enough to tackle climate breakdown. The pollution of our air, land and water is not a rural or an urban problem—it is an everywhere problem. I therefore agree with Michael Matheson’s point that we should not try to split our communities. Decisions about the use of land and how we treat the environment are taken in systems that benefit the wealthy and the powerful—often to the detriment of the people and communities who have the fewest resources.

The Scottish Government’s persistent failure to comply with the Aarhus convention is not simply embarrassing; it is endangering the human rights of my constituents and all the people of Scotland. I pay tribute to the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland, Planning Democracy, Friends of the Earth Scotland, RSPB Scotland and everyone else who is fighting for environmental justice and the right to a healthy environment.

Christina McKelvie was passionate, principled and patriotic. We had our political differences but, over many years, I experienced her warmth, which so many others have mentioned, and her wisdom.

As a quarter of Christina’s team, “the Holyboobs”, with Gillian Mackay and Christine Jardine, I will cherish our unforgettable moonwalk around Edinburgh. She united us to raise funds and awareness of breast cancer—an illness that does not care about party politics.

Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse Labour Party paid tribute to Christina on Friday night, and I extend our sincere condolences and love to Keith, Lewis and Jack; to her grandchildren; to all her family and friends, especially her SNP family; and to everyone who loved Christina.

Larkhall and District Volunteer Group will remember her as compassionate. Friends of Stonehouse Park have honoured a “positive personality”. Hamilton District Foodbank said:

“It has been a privilege to have had Christina in our lives.”

I will remember the woman who believed in human rights, fought for equality and championed social justice.

Christina loved a good quote, so I will conclude with words that she spoke in the Scottish Parliament that she loved. She said:

“Be bold, be courageous and be brave, because the people of this land—our Scotland—demand and deserve nothing less.”—[Official Report, 25 May 2016; c 61.]

[Applause.]

I welcome the minister’s update. The issue of clarifying the definition of “sustainable and regenerative agriculture” has come up during scrutiny of the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill. What is the Government doing to ensure that there is a clear and consistent definition and that the aims that underpin the Government’s vision, strategy and legislation are clearly understood?