Hospices: Funding

Lord Monks Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for allowing us to shine a light on our hospices. They deserve all the help we can give them in return for all the help they give us and our families.

My son, Daniel, died earlier this year under the palliative care of the doyenne of British hospices, St Christopher’s, which has already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer. I told Daniel’s story in the current edition of the House magazine and in a note to all Members of Parliament. Daniel also features in an award-winning ITV documentary, “A Time to Die”—as does the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay—which most people regard as very fair. St Christopher’s created a wonderful atmosphere of warmth, compassion and love at a very difficult time, and my family and friends and I will long cherish it. Daniel quipped near the end of his life, “I am being looked after better now than I ever was when I was ill”. That was not a knock at the local hospital—for the reasons the noble Lord, Lord Howard, gave, hospitals are so hard pressed—but hospices have a standard of care that few hospitals can match.

Many hospices are, like hospitals, under acute financial stress and desperately need more help, and I hope that the Minister is listening carefully to our plea. We all know that there are many demands on the public purse and that the Government face, like the female blackbird, many hungry mouths clamouring to be fed, but every effort should be made to stop hospices falling down the long list of health priorities. Regardless of our views on assisted dying—an issue we will probably come to early next year—we must make the end-of-life experience as good as it can be, and hospices do just that.