IN a column in The Herald about John Finnie’s Bill on Equal Protection for Children, Kevin McKenna wrote that, when I was policy chief of Aberlour children’s charity, I advocated that the right to assisted suicide should be lower than the proposed age limit of 16.

I am a passionate supporter of the introduction of a right to assisted suicide but I do not hold and have never held the view that children under 16 should have the right to end their lives or to be assisted to that end.

Aberlour has never contributed to the debate around assisted suicide. I advised it to steer well clear of that debate as it bore no relevance to the organisation’s work or mission.

It may be that Mr McKenna confused the position with my role as convener, also in 2014, of Together – the Scottish Alliance for Children’s Rights.

In 2014 the Bishops Conference of the Roman Catholic Church called on members to withdraw from membership of Together following a submission written by Together director Juliet Harris to the pre-legislation consultation on the Assisted Suicide Bill which, it claimed, called for children to be given the right to assisted suicide.

That was the first time I was made aware of such a submission. As board chairman, I had oversight of financial integrity, growth and HR issues and Juliet had full operational and editorial autonomy on such matters.

I convened an emergency board meeting and we agreed that, as our submission stated, “Firstly, we take no position on assisted suicide, nor on whether children should have a right to assisted suicide. However, when the issue is being discussed, the rights of children should be taken into account”, it was clear that we were not advocating this.

I contacted the Bishop’s Conference on the board’s instruction asking it to desist or we would raise a defamation action. It desisted. I recently brought amendments to Parliament to lift the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 16. I did so because I agree with the weight of international evidence and the views of the UN which state that children below this age do not have the capacity to fully understand the consequences of their actions.

I’ve always believed that so it would be wholly incongruous for me to advocate that vulnerable children under 16 have the mental capacity to understand the consequences of that ultimate decision.

Alex Cole-Hamilton

Liberal Democrat MSP,

The Scottish Parliament,

Holyrood, Edinburgh.