Hansard

There are some major structural issues here. Most notably, in Glasgow, there is no common housing register across all the registered social landlords in the city, so having visibility of adapted housing is challenging and often involves making numerous duplicate applications to various housing associations. That has been a massive public policy failing since the stock transfer in Glasgow, and it has never been addressed in 20-odd years. That is one aggravating factor. I would also highlight recent engagement that I have had with hospices in Scotland. There was a pretty harrowing exhibition at the University of Glasgow recently, which was called “Dying at the Margins” and which I think is due to come to the Parliament later this year. It presented case studies of people who could have lived out their final days at home but who, because of accessibility issues and lack of willingness of housing associations, councils and housing providers to make adaptations to housing, ended up in hospitals or hospices—often inappropriate settings where they did not want to spend their final days. That was pretty shocking. Often a pretty mercenary calculation was made that, if someone was going to be alive for only another few months, there was no point in paying the money to make adaptations. There is an aspect of how palliative care is managed in the home, and the hospital at home concept, that merits consideration. The issue causes huge costs to the NHS as a result of delayed discharge. People who are terminally ill are in acute hospital wards, which are a highly medicalised environment and probably not appropriate for them. There are all sorts of aspects that introduce great costs that are not being dealt with. There is a bit of system failure in relation to ensuring that adaptations are efficiently and cheerfully carried out where needed.