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Health: Malnutrition in Hospitals

My Lords, I pay warm tribute to both noble Baronesses whose excellent speeches on this important document we have been privileged to hear. However, the more that one looks into this problem facing elderly people in NHS hospitals, the more horrifying is the picture that emerges. I was alerted to it more than five years ago. Ever since, I have checked and rechecked the facts and received letters, and what I have learned has angered and upset me a great deal, because the situation is worse than the report states. Some old people are quite literally being starved to death. It is not more than ““some””, but I worry about every single one of them. There is a growing realisation of this; there have been television programmes and newspaper articles. A recent BBC ““Look East”” programme elicited the biggest response that it has ever had. I have received more than 200 foolscap pages from the BBC, sent in by relatives or friends who have visited people in hospital and seen for themselves what has happened. I spent a long time putting together a dossier for the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. He has been most helpful, and I am quite sure that he means to do something positive to help in this regard. Every single person mentioned in the dossier has been contactedby me—I have spent hours on the telephone—andthe evidence that I have put forward is truly incontrovertible. Some old people are being deliberately organised into a condition where ““nil by mouth”” can be put on their bed—I did not realise that until I started to look at it. I have submitted these details to the Minister. All this came out of the reports received by the BBC. I am convinced that the damage is done by the rule that states that giving people food and liquid is medical treatment. Doctors can withhold medical treatment almost at will, and this is what worries me. While backing this report to the full, we must surely make it our next step to try with the medical profession to alter this rule, so as perhaps to say that if ““nil by mouth”” is to stay on a bed for longer than a day, or two days at most, it has to be agreed by two or three doctors and a medical expert, because, so often, that ““nil by mouth”” sign is left on the bed day after day. Noble Lords should believe me when I say that people are dying while suffering, because to die through a lack of liquid is a terribly painful way to die. We in this House have a huge responsibility, and I know that the Government are now alert to it. In backing this document, I ask that we take the further step of backing and saving our old people.