Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of palliative care services in Aylesbury constituency.

Palliative care services are included in the list of services an integrated care board (ICB) must commission. To support ICBs in this duty, NHS England has published statutory guidance and service specifications.  The statutory guidance states that ICBs, including the Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West ICB, must work to ensure that there is sufficient provision of care services to meet the needs of their local populations. NHS England has also developed a palliative care and end of life care dashboard, which brings together all relevant local data in one place. The dashboard helps commissioners understand the palliative care and end of life care needs of their local population.

The Department and NHS England are currently looking at how to improve the access, quality, and sustainability of all-age palliative care and end of life care in line with the 10-Year Health Plan.

We will closely monitor the shift towards the strategic commissioning of palliative and end of life care services to ensure that services reduce variation in access and quality, although some variation may be appropriate to reflect both innovation and the needs of local populations.

Officials will present further proposals to ministers over the coming months, outlining the drivers and incentives that are required in palliative care and end of life care to enable the shift from hospital to community, including as part of neighbourhood health teams.

We are supporting the hospice sector with a £100 million capital funding boost for eligible adult and children’s hospices in England to ensure they have the best physical environment for care. The Hospice of the St Francis and Rennie Grove Peace Hospice Care, which both serve people in the Aylesbury constituency, are receiving £486,476 and £1,114,316 from this funding respectively.