Meeting of the Parliament 21 December 2023
I, too, thank Bob Doris for bringing the motion to Parliament for debate and Marie Curie for its 75 years of providing palliative care across Scotland and the UK.
The first Marie Curie home in the UK was opened in 1952 at the Hill of Tarvit in Cupar, Fife. Since then, its UK hospice network has grown, with nine hospices now offering in-patient and out-patient care and a broad range of day therapies to meet the needs of individual patients.
As others have said, the two Scottish hospices are in Glasgow and in my constituency of Edinburgh Pentlands, at Fairmilehead. I have visited that hospice on many occasions, the most recent time being only two weeks ago, when I took part in the lights to remember event.
In the past year, the Marie Curie Edinburgh hospice and the West Lothian care-at-home team supported a total of 1,690 patients through their in-patient, out-patient, community and day therapy services. I should point out that my wife is a district nurse who provides palliative care to patients in West Lothian and works alongside the Marie Curie care-at-home team, which provides support to those individuals.
Demand for the service is increasing as Scotland’s population is ageing, with the census highlighting that, between 2001 and 2021, the over-65s had increased from 16 per cent of Scotland’s population to 20 per cent, which is an increase of nearly 267,000 people in that age category. Although, compared with previous decades, life expectancy for men and women is increasing, there is a downside in that those who are over 65 have more health problems and the amount of time that is spent in ill health is also rising. That puts pressure on our health service, including those who are working to improve end-of-life care.
The Marie Curie report “How many people need palliative care?” provides basic estimates of the future need and indicates that there will be a significantly higher need for palliative care in the future. The report states:
“The methods used in this report can provide a headcount of how many people in the population need palliative care, but they do not indicate what the service implications are for meeting this need, what the gap is between need and the current provision of care and services, or which groups or individuals are most likely to miss out. More research is needed to model population need for different types of services, alongside improved data on service access, outcomes, and patient and carer experiences.”