When people are properly cared for they rarely want to end their lives, but 100,000 people a year do not get the palliative care they need.
Good quality palliative care relieves symptoms and can give people who are ternimally ill precious extra time to spend with their loved ones. Yet one in four Brits who would benefit from palliative care are unable to access it.
The UK has long been a world leader in palliative care but we have patchy provision, chronic underfunding and many people cannot access specialist care when they need it.
According to the Marie Curie Better End of Life Report 2024:
Too many people die in pain and without the support they need for their symptoms.
Gaps in 24/7 community care prevent people from dying in comfort at home.
Workforce capacity is insufficient to meet demand for palliative and end-of-life care: 1 in 5 people who died had no contact with a GP in the last three months of life.
Our hospice sector is in crisis. One in five hospices in the UK are cutting services because of lack of funding, pushing people back into an inadequate NHS at the end of their lives.
Many hospices are charities, relying on public donations, charity shops and bake sales. Only 20-30% of hospice funding comes from the NHS, and it has not kept up with the rate of inflation.
What’s Wrong with Legalising assisted suicide?
Now is not the time
Introducing assisted suicide when the NHS and hospices are under such pressure would inevitably compromise palliative care.
Funding is put at risk because the incentive for government to invest in high-quality palliative and social care is reduced.
Resources and staff time will be diverted from front line care into administration and facilitation of assisted suicide.
Medical professionals and officials will need to spend time thinking about implementation, not thinking about the other challenges their specialism faces.
It will cause problems with recruitment and retention of specialist palliative care doctors.
Many would resign or retire early if forced to participate. This would lead to end-of-life care and other treatments becoming less accessible for patients and increased pain and suffering for many due to a lack of specialist palliative care provision.
