End of Life Care

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for making that point. In Scotland there are different funding environments. I am aware of the 50% funding commitment from the Scottish Government. We are trying to make sure that CCGs in England not only have the funding they need by increasing NHS funding in real terms but that they understand how to spend it well for end-of-life care, and topping that up where necessary with central funds. So there is a big spending commitment there and with the new accountability framework we have a way of holding those CCGs to account for their performance.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister has talked about a new accountability framework but the fact is that the work that has been done so far shows that CCGs are simply not implementing the guidelines. What is the point of NICE guidelines if we cannot be assured that they are going to be implemented? I refer him to the NHS England mandate for 2017-18, which talks about developing a set of measures on end-of-life care against which CCGs will be judged. Can he assure me that the NICE guidelines will be fully part of those measures?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

It is important to point out that the NICE guidelines are not mandatory in and of themselves. What matters is that there is high-quality end-of-life care provided at the local level and indeed that CCGs are judged on that care. They can of course do things differently and that is the point of the system: to trust that clinical judgment. The noble Lord is quite right that end-of-life care is in the mandate—that in itself is a relatively new development. I will come back to him on the specifics that he asked for about the extent to which those metrics will be included in the mandate.