Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

It’s time for MPs to stand up and defend democracy

Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

Tuesday 06 February 2018 15:33 GMT
Comments
Anna Soubry said she would not stay in a Conservative Party ‘taken over by the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson’
Anna Soubry said she would not stay in a Conservative Party ‘taken over by the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson’

In answer to the only question on the referendum ballot paper, 37 per cent of the electorate said the United Kingdom should leave the European Union. Nobody in the electorate said that the UK should leave the single market or the customs union, nor did anybody say that the UK should leave the EU with undue haste, without proper analysis of the benefits and disadvantages, or at a specific point in time.

It seems highly improbable that anybody in the electorate wanted the Government to take away the sovereignty of Parliament, to withhold information from Parliament or to grab “Henry VIII powers” to do as it pleases with laws it does not like.

It is time for Conservative MPs to stand up and be counted, to join their honourable colleagues who have spoken out already to uphold our democracy. It is also time for Labour MPs to unite behind a coherent policy on Brexit and for their leader to come off his high horse and collaborate with other parties to challenge the Brexit bullies.

Darryl Pratt
Leamington Spa

We must ensure end-of-life care is available to all

The research published by the University of Leeds’ Academic Unit of Palliative Care highlights the alarming situation in which patients in Leeds with advanced cancer are not receiving crucial palliative care that would help improve their quality of life before they die.

The need for palliative care is fast increasing as the population ages, this means more people are living with multiple health conditions and complex care needs towards the end of their lives. While the situation is bad for patients with advanced cancer, it is often worse for those with non-cancer diagnoses as traditionally most services are geared towards providing care for people with terminal cancer. It’s also much more difficult to predict what path their illness will take, so harder to provide end-of-life care.

We have seen firsthand that early access to palliative care helps to manage and treat the patient’s pain and other physical symptoms.

For example, the Caring Together partnership between the British Heart Foundation (BHF), Marie Curie and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde showed heart failure is a fluctuating terminal illness where progression is often unpredictable and people will have varying palliative care needs.

Access to palliative care for people with advanced heart failure remains inadequate despite around 30-40 per cent of people dying within a year of diagnosis. This is why the multi-disciplinary approach of the Caring Together programme, where care is based on individual’s need rather than a specific diagnosis or prognosis, works particularly well.

We know there are clear benefits of early access to palliative care in improving the quality of life for people. Following this, there is a renewed impetus on supportive care – palliative care for people undergoing curative treatment.

There is a need to focus on timely and equitable access to end-of-life care for all patients – regardless of age, race, disease type or where they live. The Palliative and end-of-life care Priority Setting Partnership, a study that consulted patients, carers, professionals and researchers, found that one of the key priorities was to determine, initiate and deliver care for patients with all types of illnesses, such as heart failure, motor neurone disease, dementia and stroke.

One way we are hoping to improve access to palliative care at Marie Curie is through our Design to Care programme. This research aims to develop an innovative and sustainable approach to palliative and end-of-life care throughout the UK. We hope the results will help us to produce a new framework so that care providers and commissioners will have the right tools and knowledge to help them design and deliver excellent palliative and end-of-life care that meets local needs – something that isn’t always available for all.

Dr Bill Noble – medical director at Marie Curie

Duty free after Brexit

It would be no bad thing were exiting the customs union to lead to the reintroduction of the customs officer and his traditional stick of chalk which, in skilled hands, was a great discouragement to the smuggling of illegal drugs and other contraband.

What concerns me is the distinct possibility that we could see the return of duty-free sales of alcohol and tobacco to travellers. Use of these harmful drugs is something that should be deprecated and Brexit should not be used as an excuse to promote their consumption and enrich their producers.

John Eoin Douglas
Edinburgh

Free trade deals are not an automatic win for the UK

Sue Breadner (Letters, yesterday) is right to wonder what we might sell to China. Three per cent of our exports go there, and Germany, under EU rules, sells them five times as much. So it cannot be EU membership that is holding us back – more likely the fact that they have little interest in what we make; and I am unaware of any special reason to think that will change after Brexit.

As a low-cost and highly skilled manufacturing nation there is much however China could sell to us, which might be nice for UK consumers, but could prove disastrous for many UK firms and their workers. There is too much of a tendency to think of “free trade deals” as an unmitigated boon for us: they are very much a double edged sword and would be all too likely to harm many industries as well as consumer standards (think chlorine-washed chicken and hormone “enhanced” beef).

The fact that the withdrawal bill gives the Government power to make trade decisions without reference to Parliament should worry us even more, with House of Lords amendments perhaps our last hope to prevent this.

Adrian Cosker
Hitchin

Brexit, a tale

While at a dinner party with some old friends I decide I don’t really like either the food or the company so tell them I’m off somewhere else as it’s likely to be more exciting for me. They are disappointed at my rebuff and become even more so when I tell them my intention to take the pudding and some wine to another party I hope to gate-crash further down the road.

Why are they making things so awkward for me? Have I insulted them in some manner? Don’t they know who I am?

Ellen Jackson
Address supplied

Free the royals

Further to Paul Smith (Letters, yesterday) on the monarchy, I have long believed that, this being the people we are, if the royal family were animals, given the unnatural life they are forced to lead, there would be a militant society dedicated to their liberation.

Joanna Pallister
Durham

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in