Our NHS faces unprecedented challenges. In Grampian alone, patients are frequently treated in corridors. Over a dozen ambulances have queued at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary on multiple occasions.
At a time of strain, politicians should focus on improving patient care. Yet Holyrood will soon vote on a proposal that would license doctors to end the lives of their patients should they have a “terminal” condition. They are doing so with no consideration of the time and resources this would divert from the primary role of the NHS, to support and improve the health of patients.
Liam McArthur’s bill proposes one of the most far-reaching assisted suicide regimes worldwide, and is far more expansive than the equivalent legislation proceeding through Westminster. It’s no wonder the parliamentary committee report stated that the bill is “currently unsafe for vulnerable young people”.
The provisions initially allowed persons as young as 16 to volunteer for a state-sanctioned death (now 18 after a panicked last-minute change), so long as they have a condition from which they are “unable to recover” and that can be “reasonably expected to cause their premature death”.
Unlike the English bill, there would be no requirement that a person would be expected to die within six months as a result of a “terminal” illness — someone could still qualify if expected to live for a further three years, or three decades.
The loose definition captures a host of conditions which ought to qualify people for support to live, not die. If a diabetes sufferer refuses insulin, would they be granted a state-sanctioned suicide? What about people with Down’s syndrome, who will never “recover” from their condition? Or consider a teenage girl with anorexia – a condition which could foreseeably end her life.
Should we not do all in our power to give her the support to go on? It is ludicrous to assume that vulnerable NHS patients will not fall through the cracks. Treatment for complex, lifelong conditions like anorexia requires patience, time and money. Would offering death become an easy way out for an overburdened system?
Even if explicit pressure to die was never exerted, implicit pressure to end one’s reliance on scarce NHS resources could soon turn a “right” to die into a “duty”. If just one person’s life is ended by the state because that person fears they have become a burden — be they a teenager or a 96-year-old — this proposed law will have scandalously failed our most vulnerable.
This article was released published in the Thunderer column in the Times Scotland on the 6th May 2025
