Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if his Department will increase their investment in (a) palliative and (b) hospice care for 2021 to support people approaching the end of life.

As with the vast majority of NHS services, the funding and commissioning of palliative and end of life care, is a local matter, over which individual National Health Service commissioners have responsibility. Local commissioners are best placed to understand the needs of local populations and commission services to meet those needs accordingly.

Following the publication of the NHS Long Term Plan in January 2019, NHS England and NHS Improvement committed to increasing its contribution towards palliative care over the next five years, by match-funding clinical commissioning groups who commit to increase their investment in local children’s palliative and end of life care services, including children’s hospices. This should more than double the NHS support, from £11 million up to a combined total of £25 million a year by 2023/24.