The Scottish parliament has voted to consider a bill to allow assisted dying for terminally ill people for the first time, after a prolonged debate by MSPs.
Holyrood decided by 70 votes to 56 to back the bill, in a free vote that followed months of pre-legislative scrutiny by a cross-party committee and comes days before MPs at Westminster vote on passing similar legislation for England and Wales.
Liam McArthur, a Scottish Liberal Democrat MSP, said too many dying people faced “horrendous choices and bad deaths”, including unregulated suicides or prolonged trauma because they were denied the right to an assisted death.
In an emotional opening speech, McArthur said voting to block the bill at this early stage, before it is fully considered, would deny choice to terminally ill people, and prevent Holyrood passing a measured and compassionate law.
He said more than 300 million people worldwide lived in countries where assisted dying was legal and working fairly, while closer to home the Isle of Man had passed assisted dying laws and Jersey was close to doing so.
In his closing speech, McArthur urged fellow MSPs to “get on with the job of trying to find an honourable, fair and equitable solution to this most wicked of problems”.
Before McArthur spoke, about 60 disability rights activists who oppose the bill heard the Silent Witness actor Liz Carr urge MSPs to reject it during a rally outside Holyrood, while earlier on Tuesday advocates of the legislation had rallied in the same spot to call for the law to be reformed.
A number of prominent Scottish party leaders had already announced they would vote against, including Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister, and the current first minister John Swinney, as well as Scottish Labour’s leader, Anas Sarwar, and his deputy, Jackie Baillie.
But Russell Findlay, the Scottish Conservative leader, and his deputy, Rachael Hamilton, supported it at stage one, as did the co-conveners of the Scottish Greens, Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater.
Pam Duncan-Glancy, Scottish Labour’s education spokesperson, and Holyrood’s first full-time wheelchair user, fought tears as she urged MSPs to reject the bill outright. “Rather than legislating to assist to die, let us resolve to legislate to assist people to live,” she said.
“For me it comes down to this: how can it be possible for people to make a free and equal choice to allow a system that oppresses them so much to also potentially assist them to take their own lives?”
MSPs listened in silence as Elena Whitham, an SNP MSP, described how her mother starved herself to death in hospital after receiving a terminal diagnosis with advanced lung cancer, taking two weeks to die in “all encompassing terror”.
“Voting to keep the status quo today is not an act without consequence. People will continue to make choices like the one of my mum. She deserves better. We deserve better. Let’s vote for this at stage one to continue the conversation.”
That argument was challenged by Edward Mountain, another Scottish Tory MSP, who said that while the bill could prevent direct coercion of terminally ill people, it could not prevent passive coercion or coercion by the state.
He said too many Scots could not access proper palliative care, and could not afford private care, which may coerce them into assisted dying, to cut costs and stress. And the drugs used to end life could also cause distress, he claimed.
“This parliament has a duty to make it easier to choose life, rather than making it easier to die, which is what this bill will do,” he said.
But Rona Mackay, an SNP MSP and deputy convener of Holyrood’s assisted dying all-party group, said this bill was not “a leap into the unknown. It is a cautious, evidence-based step forward. Voluntary assisted dying is founded on international best practice. [The] framework it proposes is safe, compassionate and practical.”
For the Scottish Greens, Maggie Chapman said that reform was “long past time”. In countries with a legal right to die, “people experience assurance, peace of mind and courage to face the weeks and months ahead. For many people, simply knowing that the end is within their control is enough.”
