Meeting of the Parliament 06 November 2025
I am pleased that Mr Sweeney put that on the record. I agree.
The most powerful thing about the preliminary report is that it suggests solutions and provides recommendations for change, rather than putting up with things as they are now. It shows us that one in four people of working age who are approaching the end of life are in poverty, while, for pensioners, that figure is one in six—which is still too high, of course. The report recommends that the state pension should be accessible to everyone of working age at the point at which they receive a terminal diagnosis. That is a powerful recommendation that we should come together to look at.
The report identifies the understandable impact on families when a family member has a terminal illness—it often pushes them below the poverty line because of childcare issues, housing issues and energy costs. More needs to be done. The Scottish Government should be maximising the uptake of disability and childcare benefits as speedily as possible. If the Scottish child payment was a stand-alone benefit instead of being attached to universal credit, we could perhaps be more flexible in how we deploy that payment for families in which someone has a terminal illness. We could absolutely do that, too. We should also fast-track benefits—more than we do already—for those living with disabilities who have a terminal condition.
Marie Curie also talks about sharing innovation and possible best practice. I, too, name-check the Manchester experience, where council tax has been zero rated for households in which someone has a terminal illness. That is certainly worth considering in Scotland. It would not be easy, and there would be financial challenges, but, if that can be done in Manchester, let us see what we can do across Scotland’s local authorities.
Given that one in five people who have a terminal condition live in fuel poverty, we need to look at energy costs. Marie Curie suggests that, given that people who are living with a terminal condition are at home more, rely on medical devices more and are often already in poverty, a social tariff across the United Kingdom, with at least a 50 per cent discount on energy costs, could be applied. It would take political will in the UK Parliament and in Scotland to deliver that, but, together, we could do it.
I will make one or two other observations. Marie Curie spells out—I find this important as the chair of the cross-party group on palliative care—that we spend £2.3 billion investing in people with a terminal condition in the last year of their life. Only £0.5 billion of that is spent on social security. About £1.1 billion is spent on care in hospital, and 59 per cent of that is for unplanned visits to accident and emergency departments. What is left over—only 14 per cent—is spent on community care.
It is hardly surprising that one of the main things that we can do for those living with a terminal illness to make the last year of their life as dignified, pain free and poverty free as possible is to take a whole-systems approach. It is not just about the money in their pockets.
Finally—in the tiny bit of time that I have left—there has been some action in Scotland regarding the social contract, but we need to go further. Folk approaching the end of life often worry not about themselves but about those they will leave behind. We have invested in a run-on for carer payments in Scotland, so that payments can still be received once a loved one has passed away, and we have also introduced funeral support payments. Those are concrete investments in the social contract to make people’s lives better.
I attended—as you did, Deputy Presiding Officer—the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee when it was looking at your Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill. Everyone, irrespective of their perspective on assisted dying, agrees that we all must do better for those who are approaching the end of their lives. Together, irrespective of party or Parliament, let us get together and do all that we can in that regard.
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