YOU have to feel a bit sorry for the new intake of MPs, who perhaps imagined they would have more than six months in their roles before being required to vote on an issue as contentious as assisted dying.

If they weren’t aware of the shortcomings of the Westminster system of legislating, particularly when it comes to the passage of private member’s bills, they’re now being given a crash course. Some are claiming the task of legislating for assisted dying is just too difficult, and cannot be “rushed through”.

But why should voters be expected to accept that response, when a majority of the UK public has consistently expressed support for assisted dying, and realistically a private member’s bill is the only way this change is going to happen?

And if the Westminster bill falls at the end of this week, where does that leave Liam McArthur’s Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill, which is making its way through Holyrood? Its implementation will depend on a degree of co-operation between the two parliaments.

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Some of the opposition to assisted dying comes from those who mistrust the UK’s medical and legal institutions given past horrors such as the infected blood scandal, the inquiry into which concluded last summer, and the more recent Post Office scandal, which came back to haunt Conservative politicians thanks to an ITV drama.

Worryingly, among those expressing such mistrust are England’s Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, despite the fact they are now in charge of the very institutions that would be responsible for upholding assisted dying safeguards in that country. Rather than risk having the buck stop with them, they wish to maintain the status quo.

Streeting wants to improve palliative care so that patients have “a real choice at the end of life”, perversely framing as a virtue the denial of choice until some unspecified future moment, which the economics and demographics of the UK suggest is unlikely to be just around the corner.

One of the most common refrains from opponents of assisted dying is that its availability would put pressure on those near the end of their lives who may feel like they are a burden on others.

There’s a wilful refusal to accept that for some terminally ill people, a total loss of independence is an intolerable indignity. To hear much of the talk about death and dependency, you’d be forgiven for thinking the desire to spare loved ones extreme distress, trauma and life-long guilt while writhing in needless agony was some sort of delusional mindset, in itself evidence of coercion.

It is clear this stance goes against the religious or quasi-religious beliefs of many who regard suffering as being compulsory, even noble – but what right have they to force those beliefs on others?

Writing in The Times last week, Conservative peer Daniel Finkelstein expressed scepticism about those who claim Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill has insufficient safeguards, suggesting that “in truth, nothing would ever persuade them to support it”.

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In the Sunday Times at the weekend, philosopher Kathleen Stock responded as only a philosopher (as opposed to a legislator) can, saying: “There are indeed some distant scenarios in which I might accept the state being empowered to kill people who ask for it – scenarios where killing wasn’t cheaper than keeping someone alive, or where the surrounding society did not excessively revile disability and old age.”

We can leave aside the question of how one might measure acceptable levels of revulsion within a given society, as quite clearly the cost of living is guaranteed to exceed the cost of not living, to put it somewhat less emotively than Stock chose to.

I agree with Finkelstein that many of those criticising the haste of the Westminster process would never be satisfied, regardless of the time committed to consulting or amending the legislation. If Leadbeater’s bill does indeed fall, it will be interesting to see what amendments would be required for MSPs to pass McArthur’s bill at Holyrood.

It would certainly be easier if England, Wales and Scotland moved towards assisted dying together, but it’s not impossible for Scotland to go it alone, despite some negative recent framing by Scottish Health Secretary Neil Gray. There is no suggestion that the UK Government would seek to block the democratic will of the Scottish Parliament on this matter, so it’s a cop-out to imply that it would.

A more relevant question is perhaps whether Gray, and Scotland’s Justice Secretary Angela Constance, would have qualms about implementation and safeguards, given they have similar responsibilities to Streeting and Mahmood, yet the government in which they serve has considerably less power. The Winter Fuel Payment cut remains a very unfortunate backdrop for these parallel debates about health and choice on both sides of the Border.