Employment: Terminal Illness

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Grand Committee

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, for this debate and to the Committee for allowing me to speak in the gap. I should declare an interest because when I was chair of the National Council for Palliative Care, which has now merged with Hospice UK, it was an early signatory to the TUC voluntary code of practice and did not hesitate for one second over signing up to it.

It was at that time that I saw Jacci Woodcock. She has spoken very openly and with amazing courage about her situation and her emotional response to what has happened to her. Unfortunately, fewer than 1 million workers, I think, are now covered by the voluntary scheme, even though it is going well. I hoped that it would be something like three-quarters of the UK by now, and I think that reflects some of the problems that have been referred to in HR departments.

In the short time available, I shall look at the problem from the point of view of the person, their spouse and their children and then from that of the rest of the workforce, including HR departments. The person is devastated when they have a diagnosis of a life-limiting illness. They can feel as if they are now on the scrapheap, their life is drawing to a close and then they can find themselves rejected by a place they have worked in and in which they have invested their time and emotional energy. They almost always have distress in four main domains: the physical in relation to the illness; the emotional; the social and the all the problems and worries that come with it; and then the spiritual of why me? Whether you have a faith or not, if you are young and you are dying, you wonder why it is happening to you.

I welcome the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, but I caution that there is always a problem with time limits. Different diseases take different courses, and some may go into remission and be in remission for a phase and then may suddenly accelerate. The principle of somebody faced with a life-threatening illness is one that we have to take on board as a whole and not pretend that if we put some framework round it, that would solve a problem. There are examples of good practice, and fortunately, I think the NHS has done well by its staff.

I have friends and colleagues who have died in service. Indeed, the boy I was brought up with died in service in International Harvesters, which kept him employed on its books for quite a long time because he outlived his prognosis.

What about the family? When someone becomes ill, they still have all their skills, which are often transferable. With a bit of imagination in the workforce, they can be built on to help workers to learn from that person and hand on their skills. The spouse will of course be devastated, but there is also psychological damage for the children of seeing their parents rejected. That is the parent who stayed at work rather than fetch them from school, who was not always there to do things because they were worrying about work, but work has thrown them out. That will destroy their whole concept of society and the value structure.

We must not forget that 90% of children know what is going on when their parent is ill or dying. What kind of a society are we if we give these children the message that their parent is now on the scrapheap and being rejected? That will destroy their work ethic for life.

Lastly, I hope that HR departments will recognise that the evidence is that productivity goes up if you have someone who the rest of the workforce is looking after. Productivity rises because everyone can focus on what is a really big problem, and all those little moans and undermining comments vanish. Those things that demoralise the workforce tend to disappear, so it is also a good financial investment.