Statement: Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill
Published: 18 March 2026
This was published when the organisation was the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
The Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill was debated and voted on in the Scottish Parliament on 17 March, and the Bill was defeated by 69 votes to 57. This was the final vote on the Bill, and as a result, the Bill will not become law.
Royal Pharmaceutical Society takes a neutral position on assisted dying, and throughout the Bill’s introduction and passage through the Parliament, we have strongly advocated for the rights of pharmacists who may, or may not, wish to take part in assisted dying; reflecting the wide variety of views within our Membership. We also worked to ensure that the role of pharmacists was well understood by MSPs to ensure that the professional contribution which pharmacists would make to the process would be reflected in the Bill. This would have provided pharmacists, patients, families and carers with as many protections as possible.
We submitted written and oral evidence to the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee and met with the Bill’s sponsor Liam McArthur and his team on multiple occasions. We suggested amendments to be tabled at every possible stage of the process to strengthen the legislation and advised MSPs on those proposed amendments to ensure they were fully informed before voting on them.
Unfortunately, just days before the vote, the Bill sponsor tabled two amendments which removed vital protections for pharmacists, and other healthcare professionals, who may have wished to conscientiously object to taking part in the assisted dying process.
The first of these amendments removed the section in the Bill detailing healthcare professionals’ rights to conscientiously object from taking part if they did not wish to. The second of these amendments removed an extremely important safeguard which would have ensured that the substance could only be supplied by a registered pharmacist. This left an outstanding question as to whether pharmacists would be able to conscientiously object to supplying the substance, given the fact that this process is not described anywhere in the legislation.
In addition, several amendments which were tabled, and would have clarified what the role of a pharmacist would be when accompanying a doctor or nurse during an assisted death, were voted down. This left uncertainty around the role of pharmacists in the assisted dying process. In our view, this would have been confusing to patients, carers, pharmacists and other healthcare professionals. The legislation would have enabled the pharmacist to be present at an assisted death, but without the authority to support the process with their expertise.
Scottish Pharmacy Board, who represent our Members in Scotland, decided that the removal of these amendments, and the voting down of amendments to clarify the role of pharmacists in the process, would have left pharmacists without adequate safeguards, and as a result last week we issued a statement opposing the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill, which you can read in full, here.
This is a sensitive and ethically complex area of policy, and all the way through, Royal Pharmaceutical Society in Scotland has navigated a delicate and sensitive path so that the wide variety of views amongst our Membership could be respected. Ultimately, the Bill which MSPs voted on did not contain vital protections for pharmacists and patients, and for that reason, we had to be very clear about our view on this specific piece of legislation, whilst remaining neutral on the principle of assisted dying.
This topic may well come back to be debated by a future Scottish Parliament. If it does, The Royal College of Pharmacy stands ready to fully engage with the debate again, to ensure any legislation brought forward protects both patients and pharmacists.
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