Member

The primary point of contact, as we have heard, will be the personal navigator. One of the difficulties that I have with this is that there is no definition in the 35 amendments tabled of who might be a personal navigator and what qualifications they should have. There seems to be no requirement that they even have some form of medical or nursing qualification, yet their task will be to ensure that the services required by the person concerned are delivered as required and to the timeline set in the Bill. This presumes that the personal navigator is able to understand precisely what the person is seeking, to ensure that the person understands the consequences of what he or she is seeking—not only in terms of death, but in terms of the difficulties that may arise after lethal drugs have been taken—to record and report on these timelines and to be able to assist people requiring assistance to obtain exemptions from the timelines. That is not a mere administrative job. There has to be consideration with the person seeking death of what they want to follow in each of the timescales provided for in Amendments 223, 301, 321 et cetera. It is complex.