MPs across divide call for better palliative care after assisted dying vote

MPs on both sides of the debate over assisted dying have called for improvements to palliative care, regardless of whether parliament eventually enacts legalisation.

Layla Moran, who supported the bill at its second reading on Friday, and Diane Abbott, who did not, agreed that more funding was required to improve end-of-life care during a joint-interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“I am very worried that vulnerable people will get swept up in the assisted dying route, when actually what they really need is access to hospice care and proper end-of-life care,” Abbott said.

While she said she had sympathy for the opposing view, the Labour MP said she wanted people to “not see supported suicide as the only option” if they had concerns such as being a “burden” or worries about the family finances.

“If we’re thinking about choice, we also have to think about the choice of people who, if they could get support, could end their life peacefully and happily,” Abbott added.

But, she said, many could find themselves pushed towards assisted dying “either because they don’t want to be a burden, or they’re worried about their families’ finances being drained by the cost of care”. She said some may even be concerned about “taking up the hospital bed”.

Abbott added: “I think they should have a genuine choice and not see supported suicide as the only option.”

During the parliamentary debate on Friday, Moran called on the health secretary, Wes Streeting, to “put firm commitments on palliative care on the table”, telling the Commons the government had so far offered only “woolly words about how they are actually going to tackle this”. The chair of the health and social care committee said: “I say to the secretary of state, who is in his place: the gauntlet has been thrown down.”

Speaking to Radio 4 on Saturday, she said she was disappointed not to have heard any such policy announcement from Streeting.

Explaining her decision to vote for the bill, which attracted the support of a majority of MPs on Friday, the Liberal Democrat MP said: “I’ve been moved by personal experiences. My best friend’s mother contracted cancer about 20 years ago … I saw how taking that little bit back of control in her life was so important to her.

“But I would also say that, while I voted for it, I think all of us want this to be a good bill. I would hope colleagues across the house – especially those who voted for it – reserve the right to vote no at further stages, and those who are against it, those who made arguments against it, we need to take those extraordinarily seriously. The one that I am particularly interested in is palliative care.”

Speaking to the BBC on Saturday, the president of the Association for Palliative Medicine of Great Britain and Ireland, Dr Sarah Cox, said: “Health secretary Wes Streeting said part of the reason he could not vote for assisted dying was because palliative care was not good enough. So I would say to him, now is the time to fix that.”

Cox, whose organisation opposes the bill, added: “The UK is often held up as having the best palliative care in the world – but that is not the case any longer. We are not getting the funding we need.”