Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to examine the (a) rise in deaths in private homes and (b) quality of end of life care that people have received since the start of the covid-19 pandemic.

We continue to monitor the number of deaths in private homes and the quality of end of life care to understand the impact of the pandemic on palliative and end of life care provision.

NHS England and NHS Improvement review the quality of end of life care service provision through the National Audit of Care at the End of Life. Its most recent National Summary is expected to be published in summer 2022. The National Institute for Health Research has also commissioned research into the end-of-life care experiences of black people during the COVID-19 pandemic.