Liverpool Care Pathway

Oliver Colvile Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

Thank you very much indeed, Mr Weir, for calling me to speak. It is a pleasure to serve under you.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) on securing this important debate. I suspect that I am not particularly well qualified to speak about the Liverpool care pathway, but neither are an awful lot of my constituents. Therefore, it is very important that what we talk about today is how we can look after their interests, and the interests of others, in this regard.

I am very aware of what kind of death I want to end up having. Some six years ago, my father died while driving his car. He came out of his office, at the age of 89, to go and have lunch with the Archdeacon of Canterbury. My father had a massive heart attack, pulled over to the side of the road—thank goodness he did not take anyone with him—and duly died. It was just yards away from the church and I know very well that God decided, probably in his infinite wisdom, that the one thing that he was not going to do was allow my father, a former naval commander, to give the archdeacon a difficult time. However, I am very aware that—frankly—an awful lot of us do not have that kind of option about how we end up dying, if we have an option at all. Many people find themselves having to go into hospital, and dying there.

Many of us have a great deal of notice about dying. So, in the next few minutes, I want to talk about an individual constituency case that I had—an appalling story about the death of the father of one of my constituents in the Derriford hospital in Plymouth. In doing so, I want to ensure that the public are aware of the controversial approach to ending life and that we have a discussion about it.

My constituent’s father went to Derriford hospital from Mount Gould hospital, which is also in Plymouth, in April 2011 because he had become bedridden. He was put on the Liverpool care pathway without any food and water. That was supposed to last for up to two days, but he lived for 12 more days, finally dying on 8 May 2011. My constituent claims that during the time that her father was on the LCP, he perked up and was even watching television. Despite that, he remained on the LCP.

My constituent’s family feel, and I rather agree with them, that giving someone 12 days to die is not what this system should be about. Although Derriford hospital claims that staff spoke to the family on the ward, my constituent and her siblings dispute that. They claim that they did not know that their father was on the LCP until the car park attendant told them.

To give Derriford hospital its due, the chief executive—who is new to the job and was not at the hospital when this case happened—has dealt with the case subsequently, recognising that the clinical teams may not have explained fully to my constituent’s family what was going to happen and what was actually involved in the LCP. The family feel that they were forced to watch their father die under very distressing circumstances. Despite having his food, water and medication withdrawn, the family were horrified to see him biting the sponge that was being used to wipe his lips, because he was so hungry and thirsty.

Unfortunately, my constituent has also had a subsequent —and completely different—experience of the LCP when her brother-in-law died at a hospice. It must be remembered that hospice staff are specialists in helping patients at the end of their lives, and the more that we can encourage people who are suffering in that situation to be dealt with by hospices, the better. Certainly a lot of hospitals are very busy indeed and their staff do not necessarily have the time to carry out the kind of checking that we feel they should do.

I am very aware that the death of a close relative is a traumatic time. One should remember that patients’ relatives do not always take in the full story that they are being told and that they can become confused about what they are being told. However, we must ensure that a system is in place that avoids those kind of complications.

I am very aware that the Government are taking this whole matter very seriously and I am grateful to them for that. I thank my hon. Friend the Minister and his colleagues for the review, about which he wrote to me just today, and their proposal to produce a new pledge on care planning. To help my constituent, and many other people like her, we need to ensure that we have a timetable for that.

I pay tribute to bereavement charities, such as Cruse Bereavement Care. They do an enormously good job in helping families through the whole grieving process. I ask for more training, and for more information for families so that they can be assured that their relatives will get the best care possible. By giving detail to the Government’s proposals, the Minister would be giving certainty to Benjamin Franklin. Members might remember that he wrote, in a letter to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy in 1789, that the only things we can be certain of are birth, death and taxes.