Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)

My Lords, I will speak briefly to two amendments in this group, the first being Amendment 334. In particular, I hope to draw the attention of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, the sponsor of the Bill, to subsection (6)(m) of the proposed new clause and ask him whether he might be inclined to look sympathetically at the proposal there, which relates to palliative care. We have had the discussion many times in Committee about the importance of palliative care, which is a shared sense from all sides of this wider debate. Proposed new subsection (6)(m) would require that the assisted dying panel in its assessment must ascertain whether a person considering seeking an assisted death “has experienced the involvement of a specialist palliative care team and, if not, whether this was because of availability, unsatisfactory care or patient choice”. I would have thought that this should be acceptable to the sponsor of the Bill. Why would you not want to know whether somebody coming before an assessment panel has had access to specialist palliative care, and, if they have not, whether it is because of the concern that a lot of us have, that palliative care gaps exist right across the country? That will bring about a degree of transparency as to what is actually going on. In a sense, the difference perhaps between those who are more optimistic and those of us who are less sanguine about the availability of palliative care just comes from the lack of transparency and the lack of a firm government commitment at this stage to funding unmet need in palliative care. Perhaps by way of analogy, we should look at what is happening in mental health services and the health professionals within it, some of whom are going to be required to support the processes set out in the Bill. We have line of sight as to what is happening on mental health spending only because of an amendment that the House of Lords inserted into the Health and Care Act 2022, which requires the Secretary of State to declare his or her hand for the upcoming year, as to what they plan on doing about the share of NHS funding going to mental health. We found out yesterday from a Written Statement by the Health and Social Care Secretary that his plan is that the share of NHS funding going to mental health services next year should be cut, which is a pretty significant departure from the arrangement that had existed since 2015 onwards. Obviously, that has provoked a degree of concern across the NHS. We have that degree of transparency on mental health but we do not have it in respect of palliative care, and proposed new subsection (6)(m) just provides one little ray of light as to what would actually be going on in this scheme, were it to come into effect.