Hansard

I congratulate Sue Webber on securing the debate.

Hospices are essential to end-of-life care but, unfortunately, they are not available everywhere. First of all, we must ensure that everyone has access to high-quality palliative care, be that in a hospice, at home, in hospital or in another setting. People need to have choice as to where that care can be accessed. As that can depend on someone’s life-limiting condition, people need information both to make an informed decision and to understand what their needs might be, how their care can be delivered to enable them to have a good death and where that care needs to be delivered if they require specialist care. Most people want to die at home, and that should always be the starting point. We have a right to a home birth but we do not have the right to die at home.

There seems to me to be a hierarchy of end-of-life care, with cancer patients tending to get better-quality care than those with age-related illnesses such as dementia and organ failure. It is hard to understand why that is, but it needs to change. We need to ensure that everybody has the same rights and ability to access end-of-life care.

Other members have spoken about hospices struggling financially. That is the case with many charities that depend on NHS funding. Highland hospice, which is an amazing organisation in the Highlands, receives around 25 per cent of its funding through statutory funding and fundraises to meet the other 75 per cent of its costs. In comparison, Roxburgh house in Aberdeen, which provides much of the same care, receives 100 per cent of its funding, because it is an NHS facility. I do not think that any hospice is looking for 100 per cent funding, but there needs to be a narrowing of the funding gap between NHS and independent hospices.

Highland hospice is revolutionising how end-of-life care happens. It runs an end-of-life care together project with NHS Highland, Macmillan Cancer Support, Connecting Carers, Marie Curie, Highland Senior Citizens Network and Scottish Care. All of those organisations working together has enabled the development of the service, which offers a 24/7 helpline for agencies and families looking after someone requiring end-of-life care.

The hospice also provides a palliative care response service. That is being rolled out in Inverness, and the hope is that it will be rolled out more widely. The service provides palliative care at home, and it helps cut costs to the NHS by preventing hospital admissions. It is very important to delivering the service that the final year of life is pre-planned, so that services can be put in place and are ready for when they are required. It is important that all the stops are pulled out to ensure that people have the death that they would wish for and, indeed, that their families are witness to that, as it helps with the grieving process.

I will touch on funding not just for hospices but more widely. In my region, there are many community groups that provide support to older people and people with life-limiting and chronic conditions, but many have not had a funding uplift for decades. Because of underfunding, they cannot continue to provide the services that they do and will fail, and it will mean a loss of community care provided by the voluntary sector as well as more hospital admissions. It is a false economy, because hospitals are not geared up for that kind of care; it costs more and it is not good for the patient or their family. We need to invest in end-of-life care as we do at the start of life—they need to have equal importance.