Hospices and Palliative Care Services

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, on securing this short but important debate, which has had many very pertinent contributions. The goal of palliative care is to prevent and relieve suffering and improve quality of life for people with serious and complex illnesses. End-of-life care affects all of us; it is everybody’s business and, as such, must be a central focus of any health, social care and housing reform agenda.

Much of the recent progress in end-of-life care was enabled by its inclusion as one of only eight high-level priorities in the NHS Next Stage Review, which the previous Government brought forward. Indeed, we made end-of-life care a priority; we made a commitment to it and, significantly, we increased funding to hospices. The key challenge facing the Government now is to ensure that end-of-life care continues to be one of the top few high-level organisational priorities at each stage of the forthcoming reforms. The proposals in the White Paper published this summer did not reflect the importance of end-of-life care sufficiently to guard against it being subsumed by other higher profile priorities. That is not just my opinion; it is also the opinion of the Palliative Care Association.

I have glanced at the results of the consultation published today and have yet to find the words “end-of-life strategy”. It may be in the operation strategy document, which is my weekend reading. I echo my noble friend Lord Faulkner in his concern about how the new GP commissioning will deliver palliative care. I suspect that many organisations that have campaigned for end-of-life care so successfully in recent years will be concerned about what comes next. Diluting recognition of end-of-life care as a discrete, high-level priority risks undermining the progress made, and I suggest devalues end-of-life care as a government priority. I should be grateful for the Minister’s comments on this and his reassurance. Surely, if the Government intend to drive cultural change in the NHS, as they say they do, it is essential that they reflect the whole journey of a person’s care throughout their life to their death and into bereavement care for their family and friends. The Minister needs to address some serious worries and concerns raised during this debate.