Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment Health Education England has made of the adequacy of (a) staff numbers, (b) pay and (c) employment terms and conditions in the hospice and associated voluntary sector as part of its long-term workforce planning for (i) nurses and (ii) children's nurses.

Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) determine the level of National Health Service-funded hospice care locally and are responsible for ensuring that the services they commission meet the needs of their local population. CCGs are best placed to understand local needs and to fund services to meet those needs from the overall resource allocations they receive.

Health Education England’s (HEE’s) role is advising the health care system to ensure a sufficient supply of registered nurses are in the labour market, from which palliative care nurses can be drawn. HEE does not specifically plan for the numbers of palliative care nurses. Palliative care training is a professional development activity that is often funded by employers. This specialism is open to registered nurses. HEE has worked with partners at a national and Cancer Alliance level to develop Stage 1 of the Cancer Workforce Plan. This stage has focused on the supply issues related to seven occupations who are central to cancer care.

Reforms to healthcare education funding that started to take effect from 1 August 2017 have unlocked the cap which constrains the number of pre-registration nursing, training places allowing students to gain access to nurse degree training courses. To support this, we announced additional clinical placement funding to make available 5,000 more training places each year from September 2018.