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Assisted Suicide

With your permission, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will avoid answering my hon. Friend's question in order to save time. If we are to continue to provide care where and how people want it, to expand this work into the community and to care for people with conditions other than cancer, hospices and other providers of palliative care need the right support and the right funding. We need a funding system that can last, that provides stability and security in the long term and that actively encourages community-based palliative care so that people can stay at home or in a care home as they wish. Of course, this has to be affordable within the constraints of the current financial climate. The independent palliative care funding review looked at options to ensure that the funding of hospices and other palliative care providers is fair and covers both adult and children's services. When it reported last summer, it recommended that a number of pilots be set up to collect data so it could refine its proposals, because of the lack of reliable data currently available. Last week, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health announced the seven adult and one children's palliative care funding pilots selected for this important work. They will start in April and run for two years, and our aim is to have a new funding system in place by 2015, a year sooner than the palliative care funding review proposed. I did not wish to be rude to my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton. I do not know whether there is a correlation or a causative link between the two points she drew to our attention in her intervention. None the less, if the matter comes to a Division, I urge the House to accept the motion moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South, to be deeply sceptical about the amendment tabled by the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) and to look with interest and care on the matter proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton.