Health minister Stephen Kinnock has said there should never be a choice between assisted dying or good palliative care, during a visit to Wigan and Leigh Hospice.
The Hindley hospice will benefit from a slice of the £100m boost to end-of-life support, as part of a 10-year plan of funding for the NHS.
It received £150,000 in the last financial year to fix its leaking roof, and a further £350,000 will be invested in new boilers for the 30-year-old building and a memory garden where people can remember their loved ones.
Mr Kinnock: it is not either or, it’s both
Greeting Mr Kinnock yesterday (July 15) were volunteers, the hospice’s chief executive Jo Carby, and Hospice UK’s chief executive Toby Porter.
He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that the emotional debate over the Government’s assisted dying bill, which has yet to pass Parliament, had ‘shone a spotlight’ on the issue.
He said:
It is something we would be doing anyway [increasing funding] because we care deeply about hospices and what they do in our communities. But the debate around assisted dying has brought it up the agenda.
We welcome that. We think it’s really important to have that debate. Of course, the Government is neutral on assisted dying and we will have to see what happens.
If it gets through Parliament, we will be looking very carefully to ensure that it is never a choice between assisted dying or having good palliative and end-of-life care.
It is not either or, it’s both, and that will be the objective of the Government if the bill passes through.
Mr Kinnock went on:
The funding that’s been secured here will make a really big difference to the quality of the surroundings that people have here during moments in their lives which are not easy. This is a wonderful place for them to come and we’re very proud that we are able to support that.
He recognised that hospices need help
The minister of state for care said that he recognised that hospices, which are predominantly volunteer-funded with only a quarter or a third of cash coming from the state, needed help with their long-term financial planning.
They need to know where they are, not just for this coming financial year, but two or three years down the line. So I’ve made it very clear to my team of officials in the Departmentof Health and Social Care that I don’t want another last-minute scramble at the end of the financial year to apply a sticking plaster to solve a problem for the short-term.
Hospice Chief Executive Ms Carby spoke
Ms Carby said that Mr Kinnock showed keen interest in the work the hospice does and was ‘quite rightly amazed’ at the range it has across the Wigan community.
The money we have received has been really important to us because we had such a structural deficit, which means we were spending our reserves year on year.
Because of that, we haven’t been able to invest in the building which is 30 years old and needed some work done on it.
The flat roofs here were leaking, so it was something we needed to spend the money on anyway. That was what we were able to do.
And next year we will be replacing our boilers with the money. It’s also enabling us to invest in our memory garden which will be a beautiful place for people to go and think of their loved ones and an opportunity for us to generate some income for the hospice too.
An LDRS press release by Nick Jackson, pictures in text provided by LDRS service
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