Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department plans to take to improve the quality of palliative care.

This Government is committed to improving the quality of palliative care. Earlier this year, the Review of Choice in End of Life Care made a number of recommendations on how to enable greater choice and improve quality in palliative and end of life care nationally, including on the provision of out-of-hour palliative care services.

We agree with the vision set out by the Review and are working with NHS England and others to see how this can best be achieved. We intend to respond to the Review recommendations in due course.