Seven organisations representing Scotland’s doctors, psychiatrists, surgeons, GPs, and pharmacists have written to ministers and MSPs expressing “significant collective concern” about the direction of the Assisted Dying Bill. Their worry is not about the principle of assisted dying itself. It is about the decision to strip out safeguards allowing medics to refuse to participate and to pass the issue to Westminster through secondary legislation.
The Scottish Government has indicated that provisions covering conscientious objection and “no duty to participate” will be removed from the Bill at Stage 3, on the basis that they may fall within reserved powers. Those issues would instead be handled later through a Section 104 Order, a form of secondary legislation that typically receives more limited parliamentary scrutiny.
The signatories include the Royal College of General Practitioners Scotland, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland, Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, the Medical and Dental Defence Union of Scotland, and the Association for Palliative Medicine Scotland. That is a formidable list. When these bodies speak collectively, parliament should listen.
Their letter states: “The prospect of removing matters of such professional, ethical, and legal significance from parliamentary scrutiny at Stage 3, and deferring them to secondary legislation after the Bill has passed, raises important questions about transparency, accountability, and the robustness of the legislative process.”
As it stands, the Bill would allow people with an illness they are “unable to recover” from to seek assistance to end their lives, subject to assessment by two independent doctors. MSPs backed the general principles by 70 to 56 last May. The final vote is expected next month.
The principle of conscientious objection is fundamental to medical practice. Doctors who oppose assisted dying on ethical or religious grounds should not be compelled to participate. That protection belongs in the primary legislation, visible, debated, and voted on by elected members, not tucked away in secondary legislation where scrutiny is minimal. The substance of this Bill matters, but so does the process by which it becomes law.