Seven leading medical and healthcare bodies in Scotland have issued a rare joint warning over proposed changes to the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill, raising serious concerns about the removal of key safeguards from the legislation.
The Royal Pharmaceutical Society, alongside the Association for Palliative Medicine (Scotland), the Medical and Dental Defence Union of Scotland, the Royal College of General Practitioners Scotland, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland, and the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, has signed a consensus statement expressing “significant collective concern”.
While the organisations stress that they take no collective position on the principle of assisted suicide itself, they are united in their objection to the Scottish Government’s proposal to remove provisions relating to “no duty to participate” and other protections linked to professional regulation and employment rights at Stage 3 of the Bill.
Ministers have indicated that these matters may fall outside devolved powers and could instead be addressed later through a Section 104 Order, a form of secondary legislation that receives far more limited parliamentary scrutiny.
In their joint statement, the signatories warn that removing such “professional, ethical, and legal” safeguards from the Bill at this late stage raises “important questions about transparency, accountability, and the robustness of the legislative process.” They argue that protections relating to conscientious objection, regulatory clarity, and employment rights are central to the “safe, ethical, and fair delivery of care.”
The organisations identify four core concerns: the removal of key safeguards from primary legislation, the risk to professional confidence and public trust, inadequate scrutiny of consequential provisions, and the implications for safe and ethical implementation.
Of particular concern is the prospect that statutory protections for healthcare professionals could be settled only after the Bill has passed, through secondary legislation that cannot be amended in the same way as primary law. The statement notes that matters central to professional regulation and staff rights “should not be left to a later process in which detailed debate, amendment, and accountability are significantly constrained.”
The signatories emphasise that views within the healthcare professions remain diverse and that their organisations represent members with a wide range of ethical perspectives. However, they argue that regardless of one’s stance on assisted suicide, the legislative process must be “transparent, robust, and fully informed by the perspectives of the healthcare workforce it will affect.”
Speaking on the situation, SPUC’s CEO, John Deighan, said, “We welcome this intervention from these bodies at this critical moment as the Bill moves towards its final stages. The proposal is on a knife edge, and I sincerely hope that the opposition from such learned people is enough to convince MSPs that this drive towards have state sanctioned suicide in Scotland is not and will not be safe.”
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