Yorkshire MP to lead palliative care commission after assisted dying vote

A Yorkshire MP is set to lead a commission into palliative care, following MPs voting in favour of assisted dying last week.

Rachael Maskell, the Labour MP for York Central, was one of the most outspoken critics of Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill.

Prior to the vote, which was passed narrowly by 330 to 275, she told The Yorkshire Post that she feared terminally ill people would decide “I don’t want to be a burden on my family”.

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She said that she felt the safeguards - which include two doctors and a High Court judge - were “almost like window dressing”.

While the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, voted against the bill, citing issues with palliative and end-of-life care.

Ms Maskell will lead the commission to try and deliver an “unprecedented transformation” of care for the 100,000 people who are estimated to miss out on end-of-life care.

She told the Guardian: “End-of-life care is a specialty branch of medicine that has been kind of left to wither.

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Rachael Maskell, Labour MP for York Central. (Photo by Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)Rachael Maskell, Labour MP for York Central. (Photo by Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)
Rachael Maskell, Labour MP for York Central. (Photo by Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)

“Having the commission is going to be a way of really ensuring that it’s properly integrated into healthcare and ensuring that it is optimised because 100,000 people are not getting it.”

Palliative care is currently provided by hospices, charities and the NHS, but critics say it is a postcode lottery.

Yorkshire MP Alex Sobel said: “Hospices like Wheatfields in the Leeds Central and Headingley constituency have been under unbearable strain for nearly a decade and a half due to inadequate funding from the NHS at UK level.”

Under the terms of reference, experts would look at how to provide “holistic” end of life care, which includes “patient-led care planning, and support for physical, psychological, emotional, social and spiritual wellbeing”.

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Other issues that MPs raised with the assisted dying law is the amount of time given to debate.

As the legislation has been brought forward via a private member’s bill, which allows backbench MPs to propose legislation, there was only five hours of debate in the House of Commons on Friday.

Several MPs, including Goole and Pocklington MP Sir David Davis, have called on No10 to devote the Government’s Parliamentary time to debate the bill, however, yesterday Downing Street ruled this out.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “We’ve been clear all along that this bill is a private member’s bill and will remain a private member’s bill, therefore it will not be allocated government time.

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“The next step in the process is for it to enter committee [stage] where it will face line by line scrutiny.”

He also confirmed that Whitehall had started to carry out impact assessments of the proposed assisted dying legislation.

“The Government will assess the bill and will be looking at the impact and the possible economic, social and environmental impacts, as we would do through a normal impact assessment,” the spokesman added.

No10 would not confirm whether the Department for Health and Social Care or the Ministry of Justice would lead on this.

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Both Cabinet secretaries, Mr Streeting and Shabana Mahmood, did not support the legislation.

Downing Street said that neither were recusing themselves from the process: “All of government has repeatedly said that we will respect the will of Parliament when it comes to this issue.”

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