The atmosphere in the Scottish parliament usually remains calm, but the debate scheduled for Tuesday promises to be intense, as it revolves around an issue deeply intertwined with life and mortality.

This session will see the final vote on Liam McArthur’s controversial Assisted Dying Bill. Should it gain approval, the legislation would permit the NHS to provide medications intended for assisted suicide to patients deemed vulnerable, offering them the choice to end their own lives.

While the proposal outlines that only those suffering from terminal illnesses would be eligible, experiences in other regions suggest that such criteria could eventually broaden. This expansion might encompass individuals with chronic physical or mental health conditions, raising further ethical concerns.

The term ‘voluntary’ is a focal point of the proposal, implying that the ultimate choice lies with the patient. Yet, it’s common knowledge that many people, particularly those who feel like a burden to their loved ones or dread the prospect of entering a care facility, might perceive this option differently.

Often, these individuals are women who, guided by societal norms from a young age, have been conditioned to prioritize their family’s needs and adhere to the guidance of medical professionals.

Such individuals might start believing that their absence could be more beneficial for everyone involved. They may also feel reassured by the suggestion, assuming that it must be the right decision since their general practitioner or hospital consultant brought it to their attention.

It works in other countries, the euthanasia lobby crows. Oh, it works all right. It works only too well.

Canada was once the very model of a modern euthanasia system, held up by assisted suicide advocates as an exemplar of dignity and safety. They don’t hold it up anymore.

Liam McArthur’s Assisted Dying Bill will be put to a final vote on Tuesday

When Canada introduced its Medical Assistance In Death (MAID) regime in 2016, the annual number of people availing themselves of it was 1,015. By 2024, the most recent year for which statistics are available, that number had spiralled to 16,499.

That’s an almost unfathomable 1,526 per cent increase in the space of just eight years. MAID is now so commonplace it accounts for one in every 20 deaths in Canada.

Imagine, if you will, walking through your local cemetery and every row you pass contains at least one person killed by their doctor.

If assisted dying becomes law here, Scotland faces the prospect of becoming another Canada, a global by-word for the industrial-scale killing of the desperate and the vulnerable.

I understand the passion of sincere people on the other side. They dread a slow, undignified death. 

They have perhaps sat at the bedside of a loved one, wishing dearly for their suffering to end.

And if it was possible to devise a foolproof assisted suicide system, I could see why they might think that the answer, even though I would continue to disagree in principle.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a foolproof system. There will always be risks. There will always be loopholes.

Not only will some people fall through those loopholes, some will be pushed. The abused wife whose husband gaslights her into ending it all. 

The patient first encouraged to consider suicide by a doctor who secretly resents elderly or disabled people as a burden on his time and society’s resources.

And that is before we consider the issue of unsuccessful assisted deaths.

It’s a medical procedure after all and medical procedures don’t always work. What if the drugs don’t have the desired effect? 

What if they cause grave damage to the body but don’t stop the heart?

There is no clarity on what would happen in this situation, and whether the doctor should try to bring the patient back round or kill him off with a lethal injection or some similar method. 

None of this is pleasant to read – it’s certainly not pleasant to write – but we have to face up to the realities of euthanasia.

Especially since one safeguard after another has been jettisoned, along with the right of institutions to refuse to have anything to do with it. 

Supporters of the Bill voted down an amendment that would have guaranteed an institutional conscientious objection.

What that will mean in practice is that a care home or hospice run by a Christian order will not be allowed to opt out. 

The Catholic Church has already said its hospices and care homes might have to close down altogether.

(Another conversation we would rather avoid: the all-too-obvious risk, especially with elderly people in understaffed care homes, that the wrong patient is accidentally dispensed suicide drugs.)

Holyrood has not distinguished itself as a great legislative body. The Gender Recognition Bill had to be blocked by Westminster for straying into UK-wide equalities law. (When the SNP government challenged this decision in court, it got sent away with a flea in its ear.)

The Gender Representation on Public Boards, intended to add more women to boardrooms, tried to define ‘women’ to include trans-identifying men. (This eventually brought us the Supreme Court’s landmark gender ruling.)

The Referendum Bill saw Holyrood attempted to legislate beyond its powers and required MSPs to be set right in another key judgment by the Supreme Court. 

The courts put a stop to the unlawful Named Persons Scheme and the blanket ban on public worship during the pandemic. (Each violated a provision of the European Convention on Human Rights.)

Westminster had to step in and halt the disastrous deposit return scheme while ministers were forced to rewrite two Bills incorporating the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the European Charter of Local Self-Government after the Supreme Court pointed out they were ultra vires.

One piece of legislation, the Offensive Behaviour Act, had to be repealed just six years after it was passed, so vague were its terms and noxious its effects.

These Bills and policies were either ill-conceived or injurious, but the Assisted Dying Bill is another species entirely. 

This is not a Bill where little legislative boo-boos can be highlighted by a judge and tidied up by Holyrood.

Where this Bill is inadequate – and it is inadequate in a great many respects – it will carry the risk of people losing their lives. No amount of tidying up can undo that.

The stakes are indeed high. If the Bill becomes law, and nothing ever goes wrong, it will still mean vulnerable people being helped to end their lives and doctors who trained for a caring profession going into the killing profession.

Instead of investing in palliative care so people can live out their final weeks in dignity, the state will supply them with taxpayer-funded suicides.

If the Bill becomes law, and just one thing does wrong, it will mean people who wanted to live, who could have lived, cajoled or guilted into an involuntary self-destruction.

MSPs who support it might not be the ones who dole out the killer drugs, but their fingerprints will be on each and every prescription.

Twenty-seven years on from the opening of the Scottish parliament, is this really the best devolution has to offer? 

‘Sorry, we can’t teach your child to read, but we can hurry along her granny’s death.’ Nearly 30 years and this is what devolution looks like.

Tasked with making Scotland more democratic, it has embedded an untouchable elite pursuing its own priorities with no regard for the popular will. 

Entrusted to improve and strengthen our public services, it has done untold damage, not least to education and health.

Empowered to make life better in Scotland, it prefers to make it easier to take life away from elderly, disabled and other vulnerable people.

Should the Assisted Dying Bill pass, should this act of moral and ethical vandalism makes it onto the statute books, it will put beyond any doubt that the devolution experiment has failed. 

And not only failed, but turned rancid.