Last year I agreed to act in a sort of “understudy” role for Margo MacDonald, who was proposing a bill on assisted suicide, writes MSP Patrick Harvie in the Evening Times.

It was her second attempt to address this complex subject, and the new bill involves additional levels of detail to answer objections raised last time round. It’s also a subject which raises really big questions: about life and death; about distressing circumstances we all hope we’ll never face (though a great many of us will) and about the values by which we live.