Sir Edward Leigh

I wish to be mindful of other people, so I will proceed and make this one simple point on behalf of care homes. Mr Hayes continues: “During the pandemic, we saw the appalling attempts at a widespread use of ‘Do Not Attempt Resuscitation’ arrangements for older people. This is a clear demonstration that an existing broken system places a lower value upon the lives of older people than of others.” This is the important point: “Relationships within residential care for older people are both professional and intimate. Carers, Care Leaders, and Service Managers are all competent health and social care professionals, but they are also friends and confidantes of those that live within social care services. The relationships are familial in the sense of contact for hours each day and the extension of support to ordinary, everyday issues outside the scope of normal healthcare professionals. Our employees deliver loving care and build relationships in a way that residents come to depend upon and take comfort from. Such relationships are key to excellent care provision, and these important relationships enhance and prolong lives by providing a sense of purpose and place to older people.” I have been around these care homes. They are fantastic places, with such love and such care for the most vulnerable in society. My Hayes then continues: “In such a setting, it renders the ability for an individual to refuse to partake…as useless. In an environment such as a care home, there is no way in which a professional could be fully ‘separated’ from assisted dying, should a resident they work with closely seek to enquire about or make a request. Imagine a scenario where an individual living in social care is at the point where they will be provided with the approved substance to bring about their own death: In a care home, this is likely to be in their own room, which will be in close proximity to many other older people who live within that setting. It will be commonplace and understandable that the magnitude of the event will mean that the individual will wish to have company and comfort up to and immediately before/during the period in which the substance is taken. A request for the company of a care professional will create a substantial moral dilemma for that person, profoundly so if they are individually opposed to Assisted Dying.” That is the choice that these loving care workers will have to make—that would be the pressure on them. He goes on to say: “Even where they are not, it will mean that they will intimately witness the death of someone with whom they have a strong bond, with that death having come about through facilitation, rather than naturally.” Imagine the pressure on the workers in that care home.