This week, seven of the country’s most influential healthcare bodies united to express concerns about safeguards in Liam McArthur’s Assisted Dying Bill. Kevin McKenna isn’t surprised.

As they peer over Liam McArthur’s assisted dying precipice, it seems our health and care sector doesn’t like what it sees. Along with six other medical and healthcare organisations across the country, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society issued a joint statement of consensus this week expressing serious concern about changes being proposed to the Bill.

None of these membership bodies have signalled any position on the principle of assisted dying. The organisations include healthcare professionals some of whom will be asked to provide end of life care to their patients and must have the trust and confidence of them and their families that their ministry is entirely objective. What unites them are doubts about provisions relating to conscientious objection and the right not to participate.

They fear that recent interventions by the Scottish Government signal a move to remove such protections at Stage 3 of the Bill as they’re issues not covered by devolution. These issues would be addressed later, it seems, by a Section 104 Order which receives more limited scrutiny.

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In their letter to Mr McArthur and the relevant Holyrood committees, the organisations say: “The prospect of removing matters of such professional, ethical, and legal significance from parliamentary scrutiny at Stage 3, and deferring them to secondary........

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