Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help support (a) hospice and (b) other end-of-life services.

As part of the Health and Care Act 2022, the Government added palliative care services to the list of services an integrated care board (ICB) must commission, promoting a more consistent national approach, and supporting commissioners in prioritising palliative and end of life care.

The majority of palliative and end of life care is provided by National Health Service staff and services. However, we also recognise the vital part that voluntary sector organisations, including hospices, play in providing support to people at end of life, and their families. Most hospices are charitable, independent organisations which receive some statutory funding for providing NHS services. The amount of funding hospices receive is dependent on many factors, including what other statutory services are available within the ICB footprint. Charitable hospices provide a range of services which go beyond that which statutory services are legally required to provide, and consequently, the funding arrangements reflect this.

To support ICBs, NHS England has published statutory guidance and service specifications for both adults and children. NHS England has also commissioned the development of a palliative and end of life care dashboard, which brings together relevant, all age local data in one place. The dashboard helps commissioners understand the palliative and end of life care needs of both adults and children in their local population, enabling ICBs to put plans in place to address and track the improvement of health inequalities.

NHS England has also funded seven strategic clinical networks for palliative and end of life care. These networks support commissioners in the delivery of outstanding clinical and personalised care for people in the last years of life, and reduce local variation.

At a national level, NHS England has confirmed it will renew the Children and Young People’s hospice funding for 2024/25, again allocating £25 million of grant funding for children’s hospices, using the same prevalence-based allocation approach as in 2022/23 and 2023/24. The Government has provided £60 million of additional funding to help deliver the one-off payments to over 27,000 eligible staff employed on dynamically linked Agenda for Change contracts by non-NHS organisations, including some hospices.