Heartbroken to read today’s @NAOorguk report describing the postcode lottery of care faced by dying people in Britain. Two thirds of charitable hospices are in debt. Services are being slashed everywhere & hospices forced to cut their staff & beds. How can it possibly be right that hospices only receive 25-33% of their funding from the NHS? Perhaps the worst thing about this report is the government’s response to it, namely the glib one-liner: “We recognise there is more to do, and we are exploring how we can improve the access, quality and sustainability of all-age palliative care and end of life care in line with the 10-year health plan.” Well guess how many times the word “palliative” appears in the 10 Year Plan. Only once. For shame. Is this really the country Britain has become? A Labour government, like its Conservative predecessors, continuing to inflict avoidable suffering on the terminally ill, because it refuses to fund adequate palliative care? I believe the cardinal measure of whether a country is civilised is how it chooses to treat its most vulnerable members. And I see with my own eyes how grimly palliative care patients are being failed, @wesstreeting & @Keir_Starmer.

Proud to contribute frontline testimony to tonight's enraging @ITVX documentary "The Covid Contracts: Follow the Money". Boris Johnson's government squandered £8.7 billion on unusable PPE - while nurses wore bin bags, NHS staff started dying, and grifters like Michelle Mone saw an opportunity to make millions. We were given masks whose ear loops fell off & aprons so flimsy they ripped apart when you tried to put them on. NHS staff stepped up - like so many millions of ordinary, decent Britons across the country. I will never stop being sickened by the greed, immorality and absolute cynicism of the minority who saw a global pandemic as their chance for easy money. Tonight, 10.15pm, ITV1.

When time is short, every moment counts. Sometimes, what matters most at the bedside isn’t morphine, other drugs or medical interventions but simple human - or, in this case - canine connection. I am sharing Cookie's photo with permission. You can just glimpse her master behind her. He had two dying wishes: to be reunited with the dog he loved & to end his days at home, surrounded by the love of his family. Cookie, of course, was rushed to the hospital stat 😊. Then multiple teams moved heaven & earth to get oxygen, meds, carers, equipment & logistics in place at home. This enabled our patient to go home that same morning, just in time. It was palliative care at its best - resolute, collegiate, focused entirely on what mattered to the patient. In the most profound sense, we only die once. Here's to care, humanity and creativity at the bedside ❤️🐕

I simply cannot believe that the time available to MPs to debate a decision that could led to thousands of people receiving state assistance in ending their lives prematurely is… 5 hours. Nor that an argument currently doing the rounds in parliament to win over uncertain MPs is that we “already have” outstanding palliative care in the UK, so nobody fails to receive the best care. We do not. We are so, so far from it. UK palliative care in 2024 is a desperately under-resourced Cinderella service and this is causing untold avoidable suffering for patients who sometimes long to end their lives because WE failed to fund the care that might make life still worth living. Fix that first - please - then talk about assisted dying. Please don’t ignore or disbelieve what those of us who work in palliative care witness daily.