Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much NHS England spent on commissioning specialised paediatric palliative care as defined by E03/S/H 2013/14 NHS Standard Contract For Paediatric Medicine: Palliative Care’ in (a) 2016-17, (b) 2017-18 and (c) 2018-19.

The NHS England Personalised Care Group is reviewing the commissioning, service models, contracting and pricing structure for children and young people’s palliative and end of life care. Within that context, work is underway to develop a national service specification for all aspects of end of life care covering community, hospital, hospice and tertiary care.

The following table outlines the funding for specialised paediatric palliative care covering 2016-2019. The overall figures are based on financial information using National Programme of Care codes and are taken from the NHS England annual spend analysis exercise. This exercise uses Provider Aggregate Contract Monitoring (ACM) as the basis for the data; and where this data is incomplete regional commissioning hubs will apportion / estimate any missing values. There are anomalies in the data held on these services. As part of the review of the specialised service specification, the End of Life Care Sub group is also reviewing the current contracting and funding arrangements with hospitals providing tertiary level palliative care services.

Year Spend £ million

2016/17 26.1

2017/18 19.9

2018/19 22.8