Fixing the struggling palliative care system must be an urgent priority for the Government, senior doctors say, now that MPs have backed changes to the law to allow assisted dying.

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

It is calling for a government-led commission to reform end-of-life care, warning that a lack of funding and poor coordination is already denying access to people who are dying.

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

This is the first parliamentary hurdle to pass the bill, with several months of debate and voting still to come.

It is also possible that the bill may be defeated and may not become law.

Speaking to the BBC, Dr Sarah Cox, chair of the APM, which is against assisted dying, said: “Health Secretary Wes Streeting said one of the reasons he could not vote for assisted dying was because palliative The care was not good enough. So I would say to them, now is the time to fix this.

“The UK is often regarded as the country with the best palliative care in the world – but this is no longer the case. “We are not getting the funding we need.”

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This week the Office of Health Economics said The increase in palliative care funding was significantThe system is struggling to meet the needs of an aging population.

At least three-quarters of people need palliative care at the end of their lives – that’s about 450,000 people per year across the UK.

For example, if you have an illness that can’t be cured, palliative care aims to make you as comfortable as possible by managing your pain and other bothersome symptoms.

But A recent report by the end-Of-lIf Charity Marie Curie Figures cited suggest that around 100,000 people become homeless, with half of families unhappy with the care they receive when their loved ones die. There are reports that people are in pain and left with little support.

The audit reveals that four in 10 hospitals do not have specialist palliative care services available seven days a week.

Hospices, which care for around 300,000 people a year, are struggling for money. About a third of their funding comes from the NHS, with the sector having to raise the rest itself. A parliamentary report described this funding system as “not fit for purpose”.

Many MPs supporting the assisted dying bill claimed that introducing it would help improve palliative care.

He pointed to a report by the Health and Care Committee which found it was linked to improvements in some countries.

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

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

She said greater co-ordination is needed between hospitals, community NHS teams, care homes and hospices and training for non-palliative care specialists is also an issue.

Sam Royston, policy director at Marie Curie, agreed that action is needed on palliative care: “We have taken a neutral position on assisted dying, but we do not take a neutral position on the need to reform palliative care .

“The needs of people 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 support assisted dying does not mean that palliative care will also improve: “We had asked for a clause within the Bill for a strategy around palliative care. If it is passed we will ask for more attention to be paid to it.”

But Professor Sam Ahmadzai, a retired palliative care physician and former NHS adviser on end-of-life care, said he has visited countries where both systems work well in parallel to each other – and some places where Assisted dying was introduced, palliative care was improved.

They suggest that more attention and training should be given to those who provide the most palliative care – often GPs, district nurses and hospital doctors working in different departments.

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