Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress he has made on the development of the Palliative Care and End of Life Care Modern Service Framework for England; what his planned publication timetable is; and how the proposed framework will help reduce variation in access to palliative and end of life care services across Integrated Care Boards.

An interim product on the Modern Service Framework (MSF) for Palliative Care and End-of-Life Care is due in Spring, with full publication planned for Autumn.

The MSF will provide a clinically-led, evidence-based framework to support sustained improvement in patient and carer outcomes, including narrowing inequality and reducing unwarranted variation. Areas of action will be identified for those commissioning and delivering services with associated performance and outcome metrics to support system accountability.