Following Andy Burnham’s speech to the Labour Party Conference, where he set out plans for a National Care Service and spoke about restoring hope, My Death, My Decision says the government must not abandon people facing unbearable suffering at the end of life.
Luke Costello, Intensive Care Nurse and Board member of My Death, My Decision, said:
“Andy Burnham is right that social care needs urgent reform, and I welcome his ambition for a National Care Service.
But as a nurse who routinely cares for dying patients, I know that even exemplary palliative care cannot relieve every person’s suffering. Better care matters enormously, but it is misleading to suggest that it removes the need for assisted dying.
One central argument against the Bill was that palliative and social care should be improved first. Andy Burnham made that case himself, and his lack of support helped drain momentum from the Bill at a crucial moment. The Bill has now fallen. If dying people were told they had to wait while care was fixed, then the government now needs to get on with fixing it.
We should absolutely strive for excellent palliative care and a social care system that works for everyone. But those things can and should sit alongside assisted dying. They are not alternatives. A National Care Service must not become another reason to postpone choice for people facing unbearable suffering at the end of their lives.”
For Caroline Hearsey, who watched her mum Joan die from oesophageal cancer, Burnham’s promise of “hope” landed very differently after the assisted dying Bill fell.
“Andy Burnham told the Labour conference that ‘hope comes from honesty’. For me, having watched my mum Joan die from oesophageal cancer, those words are difficult to hear.
The assisted dying Bill offered hope to people facing the end of their lives and to families like mine. Andy Burnham made clear that it was not a priority for his government and argued that palliative and social care needed improvement first. His position was widely reported as one reason support ebbed away when the Bill returned to Parliament. Now he is promising hope again through a National Care Service.
Of course I want better palliative and social care. But if improving care was the reason dying people were told they had to wait for greater choice, then his government now needs to get on with delivering it. 
What I find so difficult is making one dependent on the other when nobody can say when palliative care will ever be ‘good enough’ everywhere. In the meantime, people are still suffering, and families are still being left without the choices they desperately want.
Andy Burnham says hope comes from honesty. I hope that honesty now includes recognising that better care cannot simply be used to put this debate off indefinitely.”
Of the 42 MPs who had previously voted Aye but had no vote recorded this time, 35 were Labour MPs. The Guardian reported that Burnham’s position gave some supportive but hesitant Labour MPs permission to stay away. The Bill was lost by just 16 votes.
Notes to editors
My Death, My Decision campaigns for a change in the law to allow mentally competent adults facing constant and unbearable suffering from an incurable physical condition the legal right to a safe and compassionate assisted death, subject to robust safeguards.
Media enquiries: kerry.hogan@mydeath-mydecision.org.uk 07922 363248
