Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that patients are referred early for assessments for palliative care.

In 2025/26, the Quality and Outcomes Framework incentive payment for maintaining a palliative care register was retired, meaning general practices (GPs) no longer receive a payment for this activity. However, the use of palliative care registers did not cease, with GPs still able to actively maintain and use their register as part of good clinical practice, including proactive identification, personalised care, and support planning and ongoing reviews.

Early identification of someone who has palliative and end-of-life care needs is vital. There are tools to aid clinicians in identifying those approaching the end of life, for example the Supportive and Palliative Care Indicators Tool and the EARLY toolkit, which are available, respectively, at the following two links:

https://www.spict.org.uk/the-spict/

https://www.england.nhs.uk/north-west/north-west-coast-strategic-clinical-networks/our-networks/palliative-and-end-of-life-care/for-professionals/early-toolkit-for-primary-care/

The number of people identified as having palliative care and end-of-life care needs has risen, from 290,433 in 2022/23 to 356,543 in 2024/25.

Timely and equitable identification of palliative care and end-of-life care needs will be a key element of our Palliative Care and End-of-Life Care Modern Service Framework (MSF). NHS England and the Department are working closely with a wide range of stakeholders on the development of the MSF, looking at how we can enable more proactive assessment of palliative care need and subsequent access to services and personalised care and support, including advance care planning.