The Scottish Parliament’s Health, Social Care and Sport Committee convened last week to debate the Scottish assisted suicide Bill as it began its scrutiny of amendments at Stage 2.
The debate took place on Tuesday, November 4, 2025. In addition to the committee members, Members of the Scottish Parliament Jackie Baillie, Claire Baker, Jeremy Balfour, Bob Doris, Pam Duncan-Glancy, Murdo Fraser, Rhoda Grant, Daniel Johnson, Fulton MacGregor, Liam McArthur, and Stuart McMillan also participated in the meeting.
Scope of eligibility of assisted suicide is “extraordinarily broad”
During the course of the first meeting on amendments, MSPs attempted to introduce amendments to restrict the broad definition of “terminal illness” in the Bill. Jeremy Balfour highlighted that Scotland’s assisted suicide Bill is much wider in scope than people believe, being “extraordinarily broad” and including individuals who could live “for years” since it only requires someone to have an “advanced and progressive” condition.
Balfour continued, highlighting that an individual’s prognosis is simply a best guess, saying, “If we accept that prognosis is flawed, how can we ever offer assisted suicide? Prognosis is open to debate”.
Balfour asked the Bill’s sponsor, Liam McArthur, if he would be happy for someone with a terminal diagnosis and 10 years left to live to access assisted suicide; McArthur replied that “setting a prognostic timeframe” would be “problematic”.
McArthur opposed an amendment that would make it explicit that voluntarily stopping eating or drinking does not make someone terminally ill.
Balfour criticised this wide eligibility criterion, saying, “There is a real risk that we could include people suffering from anorexia nervosa, as Jackie Baillie pointed out, which is a severe and life-threatening mental illness, but one from which recovery is possible. I believe that to treat such a person as terminally ill is not compassionate, but the opposite”.
Assisted suicide Bill places vulnerable people at risk
Balfour argued that those who are struggling with disability or despair could be pushed towards an assisted suicide, when really these vulnerable people need care and compassion, calling it a “profound moral error”.
He continued, highlighting that the assisted suicide Bill works on the assumption that everyone has the capacity to give consent to ending their own lives.
“When the decision is irreversible – when it involves the deliberate ending of life – we must hold ourselves to the highest possible evidential standard. Anything less would be a profound failure of our duty to protect those whose vulnerability may be obvious to others, even if it is not obvious to themselves”, he said.
Balfour continued, stating that he is “deeply worried” about what this Bill means for people with disabilities.
“I am deeply worried”, he said, “that, as a society, we are saying to somebody that, although they can have years to live with the appropriate treatment, we will open the door for them. The disabled community will be very concerned by what we have heard this morning from some members of the committee”.
Bob Doris highlighted that vulnerable people can “feel like a burden”, arguing that they deserve compassion and care rather than being left behind.
Pam Duncan-Glancy highlighted that the context in which assisted suicide would be made law in is dangerous, saying, “Unless we fundamentally change social care, unless we fundamentally change healthcare, unless we fundamentally change our housing system and unless we can get to a system that does not oppress or discriminate against large swathes of society, the context in which we are bringing in the bill will be very dangerous”.
The sponsor of the Bill, Liam McArthur, suggested safeguards were “barriers”
Claire Baker stated, “The Scottish Sentencing Council, whose framework the Scottish Government accepts, states clearly that ‘the brain does not fully mature until… the age of 25’”, arguing that if we accept that 25 is the age of maturity when it comes to criminal wrongdoing, surely that should apply to the decision to end one’s life.
Brian Whittle argued that, due to the lack of access to care that many vulnerable people face, assisted suicide could become the default option.
“My concern is that, if we do not put in place some sort of safeguard around a right to what we define as a basic level of palliative care, assisted dying may become a preferred option for patients because of the lack of suitable and deliverable palliative care”, he said.
Rhoda Grant agreed, saying, “I have concerns that, should it become law, people will opt for assisted dying due to a fear of having little support at the end of their lives”.
Assisted suicide goes against everything that the NHS was set up to do
Murdo Fraser argued that allowing assisted suicide to be carried out on the NHS would undermine the “moral purpose” that the organisation was founded on.
“The NHS was founded, in the aftermath of the second world war, with a singular moral purpose, which was to preserve and protect life—without distinction. It was a national affirmation that every life, regardless of age, ability or circumstance, was worth saving. To ask that same institution now to facilitate the deliberate ending of life would be to abandon that founding principle”.
He continued, “Doing so would blur the moral and professional boundaries on which public trust in the NHS depends. Patients turn to doctors and nurses in the belief that their sole purpose is to heal, comfort and preserve life. If the state asked them also to provide the means to end life, that trust would be fundamentally—and perhaps irreparably—weakened”.
