Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will bring forward legislative proposals to ensure that parents are responsible for the end-of-life decisions for their child.

There are no plans to change the existing well-established principles around consent to treatment on behalf of children or to bring forward legislation. The principles around consent to treatment or refusal of treatment apply to both general treatment and the very difficult decisions around end of life.

It is a general legal and ethical principle that valid consent must be obtained from an individual or, where the individual is not competent to make such decisions, from someone acting on the individual’s behalf, before starting a treatment or physical intervention.

However, those under 16 are not automatically presumed to be legally competent to make decisions about their healthcare. Where someone under 16 is not considered competent to give consent for themselves, the existing principle is that consent should be sought from a person with parental responsibility although in certain circumstances this can be overruled by the courts.

In ‘Our Commitment to you for end of life care’, we set out what everyone should expect from their care at the end of life and the actions we are taking to make high quality personalised care a reality for all. This includes ensuring that patients, careers and families, including parents, are at the centre of care decision making.