The UK doesn’t need assisted suicide, it needs properly funded hospice care

On Thursday we buried my second mother; a woman without whom I probably wouldn’t be writing this column.

While my first mother slowly drank herself to death, my stepmother, Bernice, helped me and my two brothers through teenage trauma with the reassuring maternal reliability that we had sadly lacked throughout our childhood.

When our mother died of alcoholism, it was our father and stepmother who helped us not only come to terms with our loss, but also ensure that it did not have a Philip Larkine-style impact on the rest of our lives.

All the mourners said many nice things at the funeral. But as I return to work today, one comment stuck with me: “If it weren’t for Bernice, you probably wouldn’t have become a journalist.” I always thought I pursued my career so aggressively to avoid turning into a mother; that it’s all my fault. But on reflection, I couldn’t have done it without Bernice’s support and guidance. No woman can succeed in life without the help of another woman, whoever she may be.

This is the first column Bernice won’t read, and I’ll be presenting the first one on Sunday GB News show that he won’t look. I’ll be on This Morning next week and there won’t be any text messages from Bernice commenting on any aspect of the conversation.

Of all the people in my life, she has been my loudest and most enthusiastic advocate, and words cannot adequately express the incredibly positive impact she has had on my life.

I have already written about assisted suicide in the context of the death of my first mother. I argued then that this risked depriving loved ones of precious last moments spent with dying loved ones – and I warned that Canadian experience they suggested that this could create a slippery slope where people will take their own lives due to depression and other terminal illnesses. The thought of disabled and elderly people choosing assisted suicide for fear of becoming a burden to their family also made me very anxious.

But the death of my second mother gave me a new perspective. Now I am even more opposed to what is hasty and thoughtless Assisted Dying Actwhich will be voted on next Friday than before. What I learned from Bernice’s death is that the government should not legislate to provide people with new ways to kill themselves.

In fact, legislation needs to be introduced to provide more funding and support for hospice care, which already helps people die in a much more humane and compassionate way than anywhere else.

Hospice care eases the physical and emotional pain of death and dying, allowing people to focus on life until the very end. However, not enough people can access it in both inpatient and outpatient settings because it is chronically underfunded. Take, for example, Watford Peace Hospice, where Bernice died on November 6.

This amazing charity, of which I am a proud patron, receives just 14% of its funding from the government, despite providing unrivaled palliative care to the local community.

I hate criticizing NHS because he took care of both my mothers in the last weeks of their lives. However, the sad truth is that it is too stretched to provide the type of palliative care that hospices provide. I would bet that most people who advocate assisted suicide on the grounds that their loved one experienced a slow and painful death would not benefit from hospice care or properly administered palliative care.

In hospital, Bernice was extremely agitated and stressed, and stressed staff were sometimes unable to cope with her rapidly deteriorating condition. Some of the doctors and nurses did an excellent job, including the palliative care team who referred her to hospice, but others seemed to lack knowledge and could benefit from more training in palliative care.

We had no contact with her family doctor throughout her death, so no one supervised her care except my father, a retired family doctor.

However, when she entered hospice, everything changed for the better. She had her own room; we had one point of contact, a palliative care consultant who was an expert in her field; As a family, we were cared for with the same compassion as Bernice.

We only regret that we could not place her in hospice earlier, but there are still no beds and even the most needy patients have to join the waiting list.

It cannot be a coincidence that in Canada, less than half of patients who choose euthanasia are seen by a palliative care team, and only 15 per cent of Canadians have access to publicly funded palliative care at home.

In Belgium, where the law on assisted suicide is so liberal that it applies not only to terminally ill people but also to patients with mental disorders and even children, two thirds of all dying patients do not have access to specialist palliative care.

According to the Australia Health Review, 59 per cent of dying patients in intensive care units are not referred to end-of-life care facilities. In June, all states and the Australian Capital Territory passed legislation establishing an assisted suicide and euthanasia program for eligible people.

As Dr. Claud Regnard, honorary consultant of St. Hospice, warns. Oswald in Gosforth: “This evidence raises serious concerns that many people choosing to participate in assisted death do so not because it is the best choice among a range of good life options, but because it is the only option.”

Wes StreetingThe Health Secretary has said he cannot support a bill tabled by his Labor colleague Kim Leadbeater because it would defund the NHS. But his prioritization of the NHS in providing end-of-life care is part of the problem.

Hospices rely on fundraising to survive and charity coffers have been hit hard by the cost of living crisis. Add to this the massive NHS pay rises which have pushed up hospice pay and you have a recipe for disaster for the sector.

The Budget has made the situation even worse because, unlike the NHS, hospices are not exempt from the increase in employers’ national insurance contributions. As Toby Porter, chief executive of Hospice UK, noted: “The number of people dying in the UK is rising significantly every year and hospices are now reducing services and making redundancies.”

This is complete madness, especially considering how much hospices reduce the pressure on the NHS and the fact that they ensure that more people die in their preferred place of death, surrounded by family and given the care they need. This is certainly the definition of “assisted dying.”

So forget about the bill – it is not needed. More funding is needed to ensure loved ones can die with dignity, like our beloved Bernice.

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