I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) on bringing this Bill before the House on Report and Third Reading. As we have heard, the Bill seeks to ensure that there is financial support for terminally ill people who have seen the sponsors of their pension schemes become insolvent. Thankfully, it is a small number of people, and we hope it does not get any bigger, but that illustrates the narrowness of the Bill. It seeks to expand eligibility for terminal illness payments from the Pension Protection Fund and the financial assistance scheme from those with less than six months to live to those with less than 12 months to live, bringing the definition of “terminally ill” in line with that used for social security payments by the Department for Work and Pensions, which the right hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) formerly led.
As the hon. Member for Tewkesbury highlighted, the Bill is narrow in scope and, thankfully, concerns a fairly small number of people, but its impact for that group will be significant, because it will unlock access to a vital lifeline of support when they have received a diagnosis. For that reason, Labour supports and welcomes the Bill. Receiving a terminal diagnosis is devastating, both for the individual themselves and for their family and loved ones. Such a diagnosis brings with it a slew a challenges and difficult decisions.
As the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) mentioned, the Marie Curie report on this issue makes for very sobering reading. It points out that one in four people of working age who are diagnosed with a terminal illness spends the last years of their life in poverty, and that one in six pensioners is below the poverty line at the end of their life. There are different reasons for all those things, but one has to imagine the circumstances in which people find themselves to understand that this Bill is a tiny step in the right direction for a group of people in a particular context. By no means will it solve a lot of issues related to old age, poverty and illness, which the Bill touches on.
Marie Curie has also highlighted that, all too often, terminal illness brings with it huge financial burdens and extra costs of between £12,000 and £16,000 per year for a household. This is the so-called double burden
of income loss and the additional costs that a terminal diagnosis can often bring about. It pushes families towards insecurity and fear about their income, and forces them to confront poverty at a time when they have to deal with other insecurities and fears, adding another layer of distress at the hardest of times. Those with a terminal illness should not be forced to spend the end of their lives worried about making ends meet, and I am sure that all Members would feel a lot happier if not so many of our pensioners found that that is what they face.
By opening up eligibility for support, be it through a lump sum payment from the financial assistance scheme or payments through the Pension Protection Fund in the narrow range of circumstances that the hon. Member for Tewkesbury has rightly identified, this Bill will go some way to ease the financial burdens on those who are lucky enough to have a defined benefit pension entitlement, but unlucky enough to have had their pension fund go bust and end up in the Pension Protection Fund. Extra access to cash can allow those nearing the end of their life to focus on spending the time they have left with those they love, supported with dignity and respect, which is what I think everyone in this House wants to see.
Labour welcomes this change, but I question why it has been left to a private Member’s Bill, albeit we are very happy to support the glorious achievement of the hon. Member for Tewkesbury in bringing it forward. We supported the Social Security (Special Rules for End of Life) Act 2022, which amended the DWP’s definition of terminal illness, for the purpose of social security rules, to less than 12 months to live, raising it from less than six months. It was right to make that change then, but I wonder why more work was not done by the Department under the right hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal to check the consistency of those rules when the Act was put on to the statute book. If that had been done, we would have had two more years of support for the terminally ill between 2022 and 2024, and many people would have been helped.
I wonder whether any other inconsistencies are lurking in the DWP on the change from six months to 12 months, and whether the Minister might trawl through the many bits of legislation and many statutory instruments that deal with such things to see whether any other inconsistencies could be quickly put right. Will she commit from the Dispatch Box to ensuring consistency across all the definitions of terminal illness and, because the move has been made to shift the definition from six months to 12 months, undertake to make certain that there are no other inconsistencies lurking, so that we do not have to do this again with another private Member’s Bill to make sure the definition finally lands at 12 months, with no remaining six-month definitions causing inconsistency?
Every hour, 10 people die in poverty in the UK, and one in four terminally ill people of working age spends the last year of their life in poverty. The cost of living crisis has acutely affected those who are nearing the end of their life. A terminally ill person’s energy bill can rise by 75% after their diagnosis, with critical equipment often sending bills soaring. For example, the cost of energy to run an oxygen concentrator can be £65 a month. A dialysis machine can cost £27 a month and a ventilator can cost £35 a month. Very few people wish
to be in hospital when they have access to these services but, all too often, it appears that we are leaving them with the cost of running these vital bits of machinery to keep them alive.
It is an indictment of 14 years of Government failure and neglect of our public services that so many people are spending the end of their life in poverty, struggling to make ends meet and worrying whether they can afford to run the equipment that is keeping them alive. The way our country treats those nearing the end of their life should be a mark of how civilised we are, and I fear that we are not passing that test as well as we should.
I finish by repeating my congratulations to the hon. Member for Tewkesbury on his work on this Bill. We fully support its aims, and we hope to see further work in this area.
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