Tom Collins

Tom Collins

Labour — Worcester

Speaking in the House of Commons on 5 March 2026

Debate

Palliative Care

Contribution

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) for leading on this topic. I have seen palliative care fail. My mum, Alison, had ovarian cancer. She died lonely and in dreadful indignity in a hospital ward intended for recovering liver and kidney patients. She felt a burden to a nursing team who were used to people getting better. She was waiting for a hospice bed, but, as it turned out, the waiting time was longer than she had. In my constituency, we have hospices with superb facilities. Both Acorns children’s hospice and St Richard’s hospice are beloved institutions in our city, but they are struggling and it is vital that we support them. Clearly, we need more hospice capacity, but the deficiencies in palliative care are vast, and my lurking, uneasy suspicion is that many of them are not hospice-shaped, but reflect deeper deficits across our NHS.

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