Care of the Dying

Robert Flello Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend makes a good point that is exactly right; his constituency is lucky to have him serving it so well.

I want to highlight bereavement counselling services. St Clare offers such a service, and about 40% of families that become involved with it receive bereavement counselling. That is a huge extra cost for something that the hospice does not have to provide but nevertheless offers as an extra service. Hospices receive little recognition for their work on bereavement care, and a UK study has shown that such care is often overlooked. In 2010, more than half of hospital maternity units still lacked dedicated bereavement support, thus leading families to turn to their local hospices. In 2007, an Oxford university survey of bereavement care in 10 Marie Curie hospices around the country showed that, although there are some great services, such care is patchy or non-existent in other areas. That is why hospices such as St Clare that go above and beyond the call of duty in the bereavement services that they offer deserve recognition and extra financial support.

To conclude, I should like to comment on the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) who is no longer in his place. I have huge respect for him, but he mentioned choice in death. The problem with assisted dying and the move towards euthanasia is that people will be pressured into making choices. That is why I am passionately against any move towards assisted dying.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) on securing this debate, and I have been listening carefully to the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon). Is not part of the problem the fact that if this House eventually—sadly—legislates in favour of assisted dying, that would normalise the situation and mean that people and families who are vulnerable or in desperate straits may think, “That is normality; we will go down that route”? Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is a dangerous route down which to go?

[Robert Halfon]

I agree passionately with the hon. Gentleman; we would be taking a hugely dangerous step were we to go down the road of assisted dying. We as a society devalue human life, whether through fiction, computer games or television, or in real life. I often wonder whether Harold Shipman would have got away with killing one patient after another if we as a society had not devalued human life in such a way. We need to move away from that in a big way and back towards dignity for the dying and strong support for palliative care.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anne Milton)]

Thank you very much, Sir Roger. May I say what a pleasure it is to be able to say “Sir Roger”? I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) on securing this debate. It is timely that the House is reminded of the excellent work that goes on, and we have had tributes from all parts of the House this morning for individual hospices and the work of individuals. I also want to congratulate my hon. Friend on his comments on the fears that surround death. Death is an inevitable consequence of life, albeit for some it is tragically premature. We do not find death and dying a comfortable subject. It is thought frightening and mysterious. If nothing else, debates such as this may demystify some of the issues around death.

I also want to mention in particular the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) and her comments on the privilege it is to be present at a member of one’s family’s death. The hospice movement, as she rightly said, has enabled that to be possible for so many more people today.

Services in some parts of the country are excellent and in some parts of the country they are patchy at best. As my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) pointed out, the quality of care does not always live up to what we expect. It also does not live up to what we expect in the treatment of certain conditions and in end-of-life care.

The Department of Health’s end-of-life care strategy was published in 2008 under the previous Government. I want to pay tribute to the progress that they made. It remains the blueprint for improving this area. Last September we published the third annual progress report on implementing the strategy. It is on the Department of Health’s website and I urge hon. Members to have a look at that.

[Robert Flello]

Will the Minister give way?

[Anne Milton]

I will not for the moment, because I have so little time.

Our plans for the NHS mean that we want people to have as much choice as possible in treatment in life but also in death. We want commissioners and providers to ensure that the right services, which include 24/7 community-based services, are available to support people at home.

Progress is frustratingly slow, but the examples around the country where it is working well are of note. We will review progress regularly to ensure that this becomes a reality for people. It is much overdue.

One development is the electronic palliative care co-ordination systems. I hate these names, but they can be effective tools. Through those, care providers can instantly share care plans and express preferences for care. We piloted that approach successfully in eight sites across the country and it is now being adopted more widely. We are also working to make sure care planning is a routine part of care for people who are dying. It is dreadful that care planning is not a routine part of care for all people. That has not been the case for some years, but it should be.

In November, NICE published its quality standard for end-of-life care of adults. That is an important contribution to this issue. It covers the whole of the end-of-care pathway, not just the medical bit. The 16 statements include social, practical, emotional and spiritual and religious support. We have also developed a national survey of bereaved relatives to get first-hand experiences of people’s care. The first survey should be completed by March. That will inform a new indicator on end-of-life care in the NHS outcomes framework.

To provide quality services, where and how people want them, hospices and other palliative care providers need support and funding. We will introduce a new per-patient funding system for all providers of palliative care, covering both adults’ and children’s services. We set up the independent palliative care funding review to help take that forward. The final report was published last year. It came up with some significant proposals, which we will consider in detail to ensure that we get that right. It is the first major step in local palliative care funding. We will have pilots to collect data and test the review’s recommendations, which will be established from April this year. The aim is to have the new funding system in place by 2015, which is a year earlier than was anticipated.

I also want to pay tribute to the voluntary sector. Palliative care was first developed in the voluntary sector and it still provides us with those beacons of best practice. Dame Cicely Saunders has already been mentioned and had tributes paid to her. She founded St Christopher’s hospice in 1967 and I want to associate myself with those tributes. I also pay tribute to people such as Dr Colin Murray Parkes, who has done so much in the area of bereavement and grief. That has been mentioned, but it possibly did not get the mention that it should.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and my hon. Friends the Members for Southend West (Mr Amess), for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), for Harlow (Robert Halfon), for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) and for Portsmouth North all paid similar tributes. I would love to mention every contribution in detail, but they all surrounded the same issues: this is about dignity; this is about choice; this is about life. It is also about bereavement and the care of the relatives who live beyond the death.

My hon. Friend the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) specifically mentioned assisted suicide, as have other hon. Members. This is a matter for Parliament as a whole to decide, not the Government. He talked about the perception of failure when someone dies. On a personal level, to be present at a good death is a privilege and an opportunity, not a failure. We need to right that balance a bit and see the success in someone dying well. As I have said, it is such an important part of the bereavement process.

We have a comparatively smaller number of people who die in a hospice, but so many more benefit from their services and expertise. We want to see hospices flourish and develop. In particular, we want to see them continuing to expand the care they give to those with illnesses other than cancer, as well as expanding into community-based support for patients, their families and their carers. That is where the work that we are doing on palliative care funding is so important. It will be key to moving us towards a fairer funding system for all providers, including hospices.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the one issue that has not been mentioned. In accepting that death is part of life, we also need to consider those who can be given the chance of life through another’s death. As I have ministerial responsibility for organ transplants, I have to mention that we need to make organ donation a normal part of end-of-life care. We need to recognise that through a sensitive approach to the family, we can, in death, give life to many others.

In conclusion, we come to this place to give our constituents and this country a better life, because we believe that everybody deserves a good life.

[Robert Flello]

Will the Minister give way?

[Anne Milton]

Very briefly.

[Robert Flello]

I just want to touch on the point that in my constituency, the Donna Louise Children’s Hospice Trust does some fantastic work. There is this difference between it and the work of the Douglas Macmillan hospice just outside the constituency. There is a mishmash and I would be grateful if the Minister looked at that in the future.

[Anne Milton]

We want to end any mishmash. We want a consistently high quality of care for everybody. Everybody deserves a good life and that is why we came to this place. This debate has allowed us to debate, discuss and share the opportunities that exist for Parliament to allow people a good death too, with dignity, without pain, in the company of those we love and at peace in death with the lives that we have led.