Hospices: Funding

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I echo yet again the thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for initiating the debate and for the very thoughtful speech with which he introduced it. I declare an interest as the joint chair of the All-Party Group on Together for Short Lives, which is a charity devoted particularly to babies that are born with what are seen as incurable diseases. If a baby is born in that situation, it is a great shock to the parents because they are not generally expecting it, and when the baby is born there is a huge traumatic effect. We are to have a debate on assisted dying, but we have noticed that for little babies there is already assisted dying, because the consultants can ask for medicines to be withdrawn. From time to time, there are very sad court cases where hospitals go to court to get permission to withdraw medicine against the wishes of the parents. I would like that to be looked at more thoroughly in terms of whether we have even yet got it right. We got some minor changes under the last Government together with my friend and colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, but there is still a lot to be done in this area.

In so far as the funding of hospices goes, I would like the Government to look at the system outlined in Wales and see whether we can get some sort of agreement on a system and a way of going forward in this country. The fact of the matter is that the charitable raising of funds for hospices is a popular way of raising money—we have one in our area that is well subscribed to—because people like giving, but we must not let everything rest on charity. The points made by my noble friend Lord Farmer about dignity, including intrinsic dignity, and ethics were extremely important; I hope that they will be borne in mind.

Finally, I ask the Government to have a look at the way in which integrated care boards disburse their funding because the variety in disbursement is greater than should be acceptable, even in a partially devolved system.