by Brian Cairns

Promises of safeguarding will not survive legal challenge if state assisted dying becomes a national form of care. This is the major consequence of the Assisted Dying Bill which will return to Holyrood for its second reading in the coming weeks. The Westminster Bill is due to be debated soon in the House of Lords.

For the past four years I have been a member of the Campaign Against Assisted Dying (CAAD) which has promoted grassroots dialogue on this critical issue. Emerging from that experience are five key questions for legislators north and south of the border.

Quality of oversight

The first, from which the others flow, is the question of safeguarding the integrity of national health policy and associated standards of care while permitting the intentional killing of a ‘small cohort’ of patients suffering intolerable pain. This was the main focus in stage one of the debate in Holyrood and no serious consideration was given to the wider impact of the Bill’s proposals.

The Bill provides eligibility criteria to define terminal illness. But meany of the criteria are not exclusive to a small cohort of the population. The terms ‘advanced, progressive and unable to recover’ describe illnesses and conditions shared by many, including disabled people who are not close to death.

Brian Cairns is a retired teacher.

Photo by Dominic Cullen