End of Life Care — House of Commons, 2016-03-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
Kelvin Peter Hopkins (Labour, Centre-left): I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this important debate, although I will not speak for too long. I have long been concerned about the long-term care of the elderly and have tabled many early-day motions in the past, including following the royal commission report in the late 1990s. The then Government went to great lengths to ensure that the report was not agreed unanimously, because they did not want to accept its recommendation for free long-term care for everyone, whether they be in residential care, at home or elsewhere. My early-day motion following that Government decision was supported and signed by more than 100 hon. Members, so my concern was shared across the House The Health Committee’s report "Dying without dignity" is admirable, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) and her Committee on producing it. It recommends free social care, which I am very pleased about. The reports by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, of which I have the honour to be a member, are also relevant to long-term care. The Chair of the Committee is going to speak later, so I will not talk about them too much. "Investigating clinical incidents in the NHS" focuses on the appalling number of deaths and refers to the Mid Staffs hospital disaster, which was shameful Subsequent to the Government’s refusal to pay for long-term care, there have been a series of forced privatisations of local authority care homes, which I opposed. In my own constituency, three first-class local authority care homes, where people would spend the last days of their lives, were forced to close and the residents were handed over to the private sector, which is driven by profit rather than concern for care alone. Some of the private homes are very good, but some are not. There have been some serious, well-publicised lapses of care, and there has been an ongoing crisis in the care homes world. I am concerned about that We congratulate ourselves on how we care for our elderly, particularly in the last days of their lives, but the situation is not all good. Some hon. Members have referred to the problems, including people not getting the palliative care they deserve and need. That is deeply worrying. We are all going to die one day and some of us are closer to that time than others, and we want to make sure that we and our families are cared for properly in those last difficult days. The subject needs more debate, more Government action and more support The reports are concerned about compassion. Undoubtedly, medical and care staff are overwhelmingly compassionate people, but it is not good that they are being put under pressure and made to work long hours; that they have too many residents to care for in the homes; and that they are being rushed because of concerns about costs and the desire to maximise profits. That means that people suffer. We have all had cases—I certainly have—where people have not been treated well in their homes or have not had the right care in a hospital or a care home simply because the staff are under pressure. People’s compassion starts to be diminished when they feel they are being pressured and not being treated with respect. Pay is one thing, but compassion is damaged when a staff member is looking after too many patients or residents, or rushing around too many homes with elderly single people who are in their last days. We have to make sure that compassion is to the fore in all these matters I have also said on many occasions that we do not spend enough on health and social care in general. We are rightly proud of the national health service and the principles on which it is based, but it is underfunded. We spend at least 2% less of our GDP—about £35 billion a year less—on health than France or Germany. With an injection of £35 billion a year, some of the stresses that cause the problems in hospitals in particular would go away. I also think, and said to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) before the last election, that long-term care of all kinds ought to be provided on precisely the same basis as the national health service, completely free at the point of need. I believe that it should be provided by public servants rather than by the private sector. Only when we accept that we have to pay properly for the health and care service and resource it appropriately—that we have to pay people properly and make sure that we have enough staff—will we ensure that elderly people are cared for when they are alive, and that they die a dignified, pain-free and suffering-free death I will leave it there, although I would like to say a lot more. I hope that other Members will support some of the things that I have said.