We must give Scots choice at the end of life - Alex Cole-Hamilton

For five years, this legislation has been developed with the utmost care by my Liberal Democrat colleague Liam McArthur.

I can think of no better person to lead on a bill as important as this. Liam’s bill represents the most well safeguarded assisted dying legislation in the world.

It is crystal clear. The bill makes assisted dying available to a terminally ill, mentally competent adult. No one else.

It requires two independent doctors to determine that the individual meets those criteria. Anyone who falls outside would not be able to access the law. Safety is woven into the fabric of Liam’s bill.

It introduces practical measures to assess eligibility, to protect against coercion, ensure rigorous medical oversight and robustly monitor every part of the process.

There are five points at which doctors must have a conversation with their patient to assess capacity and identify any signs of coercion.

That translates to five separate opportunities to ensure that the individual has a clear and settled wish to proceed, free from outside interference.

Crucially, the bill introduces far more checks than exist at the moment. Right now, a patient may simply decide to end all treatment or stop eating or drinking.

During the bill’s journey in parliament, Liam has been exacting in cementing those safeguards.

We have strengthened existing language to confirm that a person would not be eligible for an assisted death due to having a disability or mental health illness alone.

We have enhanced provisions to enable doctors to access specialist advice from colleagues if they have questions or doubts about a patient’s mental capacity of diagnosis.

We have introduced a right to independent advocacy to support a patient’s autonomy in their decision-making process.

In the coming days, we can add further protections, including making an assessment of six months to live part of the eligibility criteria, which I will be supporting.

It is categorically untrue that these protections would somehow diminish over time. No country with a law restricted to terminally ill people, as this one firmly is, has ever widened its scope.

Assisted dying is a unifying issue for the public.

The 2025 Social Attitudes Survey found that 81 per cent of Scots, the overwhelming majority, believe that assisted dying is the right thing to do. This is more than a public mandate; it is an expectation for change.

Across every constituency in Scotland, from Shetland to Stranraer, there is consistently high support for assisted dying.

Dying people in Scotland must not be forced to wait any longer for the choice and dignity that have long been denied them.

I have heard from people whose final memories of their loved ones is them begging to die. That is not because their palliative care wasn’t excellent. It is because, for those individuals, there was nothing that could be done to keep their pain under control.

A vote against this bill is a vote for the status quo, which will only condemn more dying people to unimaginable suffering.

Liam’s bill is an answer to that suffering. It is the right bill at the right time. It is time to give terminally ill Scots the compassionate choice they desperately need.