Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to improve end-of-life care in the community.

The Government is determined to shift more healthcare out of hospitals and into the community, to ensure patients and their families receive personalised care in the most appropriate setting, and palliative and end of life care services will have a big role to play in that shift.

We have committed to develop a 10-year plan, to deliver a National Health Service fit for the future and one of the three ‘shifts’ that the plan will deliver is the shift from hospital to community. We will be carefully considering policies, including those that impact people with palliative and end of life care needs, with input from the public, patients, health staff, and our stakeholders as we develop the plan.

I met with key palliative and end of life care, including hospice, stakeholders on 3 February 2025 to discuss the long-term sustainability of palliative and end of life care, within the context of our 10-Year Health Plan.

We are supporting the hospice sector with a £100 million capital funding boost for adult and children’s hospices to ensure they have the best physical environment for care, with hospices able to use this capital funding to benefit community provision, and £26 million revenue funding to support children and young people’s hospices.