Correct palliative care before allowing assisted dying.

Senior doctors say fixing the struggling palliative care system must be an urgent priority for the government, now that MPs have backed a law change to allow assisted dying.

The Association for Palliative Medicine (APM) says there is a risk that funding required to pay doctors and courts to oversee assisted dying could divert money from care for the dying. .

It is calling for a government-led commission to improve end-of-life care, warning that underfunding and poor coordination are denying access to dying people.

The intervention comes as MPs voted on Friday to support changes to the law to allow assisted dying in England and Wales.

This is only the first parliamentary hurdle the bill needs to pass, with months of debate and voting ahead.

It is also possible that the bill may fall and not become a law.

Speaking to the BBC, Dr Sarah Cox, president of the APM, which opposes assisted dying, said: “Health Secretary Wes Streeting said that was one of the reasons he did not vote for assisted dying. That palliative care was not good enough. So I would say to him, now is the time to fix it.

“The UK is often held up as having the best palliative care in the world – but that’s no longer the case. We’re not getting the funding we need.”

The Office for Health Economics said this week The increase in palliative care funding was crucial.With the system struggling to meet the needs of an aging population.

At least three quarters of people need palliative care at the end of their lives – around 450,000 people a year across the UK.

If you have an incurable disease, for example, palliative care aims to make you as comfortable as possible by managing your pain and other painful symptoms.

But A recent report at the end-of-life Charity Marie Curie Statistics were cited showing that nearly 100,000 people go without, with half of families unhappy with the care they receive when their loved ones die. There are reports of people being left in pain and with little help.

Four out of 10 hospitals do not have 24/7 specialist care services, the audit found.

Hospitals, which care for about 300,000 people a year, are struggling for money. About a third of their funding comes from the NHS, with the rest being raised by the sector itself. A parliamentary report described the funding system as “not fit for purpose”.

A number of MPs who supported the Assisted Dying Bill claimed that its introduction would help improve palliative care.

He pointed to a report by the Health and Care Committee which found that in some countries it was associated with improvement.

But Dr Cox questioned this, saying it was a “very mixed picture”.

He added: “We know that money is limited in the NHS – and our concern is that palliative care will be cut. The NHS will need doctors to assess patients, and judges to agree. All this is going to cost money, and palliative care is already struggling.

He said more coordination was needed between hospitals, community NHS teams, care homes and hospitals, and training for non-palliative care specialists was also an issue.

Sam Royston, director of policy at Marie Curie, agreed that action was needed on palliative care: “We have taken a neutral position on assisted dying, but we have improved palliative care. Do not take a neutral position out of necessity.

“People’s needs at the end of life are being ignored. There are currently no realistic plans to improve palliative care in any country in the UK.”

He said that just because MPs supported assisted dying, it did not automatically mean that palliative care would also improve: “We have included palliative care within the Bill. A clause was called for about strategy, if it passes, we will demand more attention to it.

But Professor Sam Ahmedzai, a retired palliative care doctor and former NHS adviser on end-of-life care, said he had visited countries where the two systems worked in parallel. There are – and in some places where assisted dying was introduced, palliative care was improved.

He suggests that more attention and training could be given to those who provide the most palliative care – often GPs, district nurses and hospital doctors working across disciplines.

The Department of Health and Social Care has been contacted for comment.