Chamber and committees

That would have to be agreed as the procedures for assisted dying are progressed. Generally speaking, notaries public are private individuals who operate in firms of solicitors and they would normally make a charge for witnessing documents. In my experience, that would not be a large charge. It would tend to be a modest charge, but the cost would have to be borne in mind.

The amendment would put in an important safeguard to ensure that there are additional protections in the event that someone is using a proxy as opposed to signing on their own behalf.

I move amendment 149.

I suggest that the purpose of the 1967 act was to protect the lives of mothers, who, in many cases, were potentially at risk from continuing with a pregnancy. I understand the point that Dr Gulhane is making, but I am not sure that it is salient to the argument that I am making.

My amendment 148 seeks to establish a statutory independent body that would be responsible for administering the functions of the act. That body would be separate from the NHS and would oversee all aspects of the process: receiving and recording declarations, co-ordinating assessments, authorising practitioners, arranging for the provision of the approved substance, maintaining compliance, and reporting outcomes. In creating an independent agency, we would make a clear moral distinction between a service that was dedicated to preserving life and a mechanism that was authorised by the state to end it.

I cannot give an exact number, but all practising solicitors who hold a practising certificate are routinely notaries public. If the member checks how many solicitors there are in Scotland, he will find that, invariably, all solicitors are notaries public.

Across Scots law, for an act that has serious legal consequences, such as the signing off of an affidavit, it is standard practice to require the oversight of a notary public. However, the bill, which deals with the very serious matter of ending a human life, demands far less. That is a profound inconsistency and it presents an unacceptable risk. Amendment 149 would therefore ensure that the highest legal standard is applied to the most serious of decisions. When a declaration is made under the bill, it must be signed by the individual himself or herself, or when that is physically impossible, by a notary public acting as proxy. That notary would be required to verify the person’s identity, confirm the person’s understanding, affix their official seal and ensure that their involvement was recorded in the individual’s medical records.

These safeguards are not bureaucratic obstacles: they are protections against coercion, conviction and abuse, and they uphold the principle that, when the state authorises the ending of a life, the process must meet the highest conceivable standard of legal integrity.

Thank you.

Good morning. I want to follow up on Gordon MacDonald’s line of questioning about your public reach. My colleague was just getting to highlighting the concern, which many of us share, that Consumer Scotland’s profile with the wider public is not great.

I have been looking at the numbers on your social media reach. On X, Consumer Scotland is followed by 408 people. Your post from yesterday, on consumer protections in the used car market, has had 43 views since it went up. To put that into context, another consumer organisation with which people might be familiar is Which? UK, which has 123,600 followers on X. I know that X is not the beginning and end of the world, but that difference in numbers suggests that you are not really reaching people in the way that other consumer organisations are able to.

My sense is that more work clearly needs to be done. I know that Openreach has a service that will provide people with battery back-up for digital land lines, so that, even in the event of a power cut, they can still use them. However, I am not sure that awareness of that service is particularly high. Certainly, in the case that I referred to, the lady did not have that service, so we need much more proactivity on that.

That was helpful. Let me ask you about another issue. Your forward work programme talks about work on the issue of postal services, in relation to which a lot of change is coming down the track. David, you mentioned earlier the work that you are doing or have done around online markets, and in recent years we have seen an explosion in the number of home delivery companies. I do not know whether your work on postal services also covers home delivery companies or whether that is a separate piece of work that you have done or might be looking at doing.

I could cite lots of cases that have come to me because delivery is not happening, delivery has been made to the wrong address or delivery companies are claiming they have delivered but they have not. Evri seems to be a particularly poor exemplar in that respect. In fact, The Courier ran a story about it two weeks ago, with some examples from across Tayside of Evri just not performing.

Going back to the more general theme that I started on, which has been a bit of a theme in this committee, you say that you have done work on that and you are encouraging better practice. I guess that committee members are trying to get to the value of your organisation. What are you actually doing that will make a difference for consumers?

I would like to ask about two specific consumer issues that are covered either in the work that you have done or potentially in your future work programme.

The first is the question of migration to digital land lines. I noticed that there is an impact assessment review of the work that you have done previously. To contextualise this, it is a huge issue in rural areas, including areas that I represent in Mid Scotland and Fife. I had a horrific case, just a few weeks ago, during storm Amy. An elderly lady fell in her house during a power cut caused by the storm. She did not have phone contact with the outside world, because she lives in an area with no mobile phone connectivity. She was, fortunately, called on by a neighbour, but the neighbour could not make contact with the Ambulance Service and had to drive her car 2 miles down the road to get a mobile signal. She then had to go back and wait completely in the dark, with no contact with the outside world, for the ambulance to turn up some hours later. That shows that the migration is a serious issue.

I am interested in understanding the impact of the work that you did in this area and the practical improvements that there have been, because issues are still arising.

Okay. Thank you.

There are three things that I would like to ask about, all of which arise from evidence that the committee has taken in the past couple of weeks.

I will start by asking about support for businesses in the defence sector. As you know, defence is a key strength of the Scottish economy; it is one in which we have seen a lot of good news recently in terms of winning international orders; and it is an area in which the opportunity for growth is substantial because of the international situation and the fact that, across the western world, countries are increasing defence expenditure. In an area in which we have expertise, knowledge and experience, we can do much better.

The Scottish Government has dropped the previous policy about not funding munitions—I will not ask you about that, because it is past history. A new policy is in place in relation to not supporting companies that might have a connection with exports to Israel. I asked Scottish Enterprise about that when it came to the committee on 17 September. Its answers were not particularly clear about where that policy sits. In response to my questions, Adrian Gillespie said:

“We are working through the implications of the changes that have been made recently ... We need to work through which companies are affected by that.”—[Official Report, Economy and Fair Work Committee, 17 September 2025; c 7.]

Can you be clear about what exactly the Scottish Government policy is and what the practical impact of that is in terms of support from public bodies such as Scottish Enterprise and Skills Development Scotland?