A tot of whiskey for your dying hours

He said patients facing death should be shown “the same respect” any doctor might expect, and for their individual preferences to be observed.

“When my own father in law died at home one of my jobs was to bring him a little bit of whiskey every night,” he said.

“It happens now in some care homes.  It can give fantastic relief or benefit to people in their final days. If relatives sneak in a hip flask to hospitals I would certainly turn a blind eye,” he said.

The Emeritus professor at University of Sheffield Medical School said he had tried to convince the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (Nice) to include the option of a “tipple” in their recent guidelines about care of the dying.

Prof Ahmedzai, lead author of the Nice advice, was one of the foremost opponents of the Liverpool Care Pathway, abolished in 2014, which saw fluids routinely withdrawn from patients thought to be close to dying.

The leading doctor said he wanted to include the option of a “tipple” in the new guidelines, but was persuaded not to directly mention alcohol in the official guidance, which simply tells staff to “support the dying person to drink if they wish to and are able to”.

Baroness Neuberger, who led the national review of the care pathway, which saw it axed, said accounts from families about the withdrawal of fluids from their loved ones had been “far more disturbing and depressing” than she had anticipated.

She told an event run by the Westminster Health Forum last month that the panel of experts who undertook the review were “all left in tears” after one public discussion with families.

“We weren’t naturally a group of softies, but there was one occasion standing on a train station platform on the way back from one of the public events where we were all in tears at what we had heard,” she said.

A number of charities have raised concerns that in some hospitals, the same practices have continued under “a different name”.

Baroness Neuberger said she hoped that most hospitals had taken heed of public concerns, so that patients desperate for a glass of water would no longer be refused it.

Prof Ahmedzai said: “I think if any parts of the country are still trying to operate the same practices, rebadging them, they will be caught out.”

He said doctors and nurses needed to be open with dying patients and their relatives about the fact that drinking fluids might cause some patients’ problems, with many choosing not to drink, in their final hours.

“The physiology of the human body doesn’t just pack up in the last few days of human life,” he said. “If people want to drink let them drink – even if there is a risk they might cough and splutter, that is their choice,” he said.