Good palliative care can ease the pain of dying – this bill means Labor must fund it | Rachel Clarke

TThe succession of former prime ministers lining up in recent days to express their condolences for the dying has been quite something. David Cameron, Theresa May, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson – they all want us to know how much they cared about us. Imagine if this roll call of political powers – all of whom were better placed than anyone else to improve the lot of people with terminal diagnoses – had used that power during their time in office to do something concrete and tangible, to reverse the terminal to alleviate suffering that supposedly affected them so deeply. In other words, imagine if their actions then matched their beautiful words today.

I have no doubt about the strength of the feeling behind this vote in favor of legalizing assisted dying in England and Wales, but as someone who has cared for thousands of people with terminal illnesses, I have to wonder about its sincerity. Because every Prime Minister of the last twenty years – and every MP for that matter – knows full well that much (though not all) of the pain and misery of dying can be alleviated with good palliative care. They also know how much suffering at the end of life is caused by the simple lack of basic, social and palliative care for patients. Wes Streeting went one step further. The Health Secretary cited the threadbare reality of our underfunded, patchy palliative care services as his main reason for voting against the bill, arguing (rightly) that the postcode lottery in healthcare is denying many patients a real choice at the end of life.

And he’s absolutely right. I see them every day, the dying patients that British society is failing. Sometimes they arrive at the emergency room, wracked with pain, desperate with fear, having begged for help and support but never received it. After a few days of input from our team – the first palliative care they have ever received – their symptoms, their outlook and their hopes for the future can often change radically.

So it’s up to you, Streeting and Keir Starmer. What will you do now about those anguished, vulnerable, pain-ridden patients who sit there trembling near death while they are being failed by the NHS, social care and society as a whole? Surely you are not going to allow MPs to introduce a law that makes dying easier while failing to find a solution to the underfunding that forces people with terminal illness to conclude that death is their only option?

Surely you are now going to make an immediate – and massive – injection of public money to properly fund palliative care in Britain so that 100,000 people don’t die every year without the care they need? Don’t become the latest political powerhouses who, when push comes to shove, turn their backs on dying people.

I know dying people weren’t in the Labor manifesto. I know they were not mentioned in the flagship speeches. I also know that this is not surprising, because there is an ugly truth underlying this sentiment: death and dying remain taboo in modern Britain. I take enormous heart from the fact that, thanks to Kim Leadbeater’s bill, a respectful national conversation about the way we die in Britain has begun. But above all, one issue must remain central. We cannot continue to disappoint dying people by grotesquely underfunding palliative care. The problem will not go away. Funding palliative care properly, once and for all, Starmer and Streeting. The nation is watching.