Dr Kieran Mullan

I welcome the opportunity to give my personal views on this Bill, as colleagues in health have taken over responsibility for it. I have spent most of my life as someone who was highly sympathetic to the cause of assisted dying and imagined that I would support it if I ever was an MP, but that changed in 2018 when I read the Gosport War Memorial hospital independent panel report published in that year. The report should be more widely read, and I often wonder why it did not get the attention that it deserved. It found that between 1987 and 2001, more than 450 NHS patients had their lives prematurely shortened by healthcare staff. They were mainly elderly—the average age being 81—but some were as young as 61, and more than 70% of them had been admitted to hospital not needing palliative care or being at the end of their lives. The report describes what happened to some of them. One patient was admitted for respite care but deteriorated and became confused during his stay. Staff asked permission to give him diamorphine, but his daughter refused as he was not in pain. However, his wife later agreed, and he was started on diamorphine via syringe driver. He died the same day. A man admitted for dementia was started on a diamorphine syringe driver; staff asked his son for permission, and he gave it, but he felt that there was no explanation of what it meant to be given diamorphine. The dose was doubled, and his father died five days later. His son felt that the diamorphine had effectively killed him. Why did that happen? It happened because the staff in that hospital and on that ward had developed a culture of prioritising convenience in looking after patients over the value of their lives. It speaks to something that we often do not like to talk about and might feel guilty about: looking after people is not only challenging but can sometimes be deeply unpleasant. As a doctor, I have helped to look after people who, when someone approached them to give them care, would scratch or hit out at them. I have helped to look after patients who refuse to stay in bed even though it is in their best interests, and who continually wander the wards and need to be monitored all the time. Then there is something that perhaps seems benign but is sometimes very challenging: the patients who continually call out for help again and again and again, perhaps asking for a medicine or a meal that they have already been given, and refuse to be consoled. Most of the time, that brings out the best in our nature, as we would want—to be kind, caring and compassionate —but it can sometimes bring out the worst in our nature: our impatience, our intolerance and even our cruelty. While I have seen that happen in hospitals, I know that it goes on in private homes up and down the country every day.