Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government how much they plan to spend on palliative care in the NHS this year and in each of the next five years.
It is difficult to quantify the total provision of, or spend on, palliative and end of life care at either a national or local, integrated care board level, because it is delivered every day by a wide range of specialist and generalist health and care workers providing care for a wide range of needs that include, but are not always exclusive to, palliative care.
Palliative care is provided across multiple settings, including in primary care, community care, in hospitals, hospices, and care homes, and in people’s own homes. Therefore, not all palliative and end of life care will be recorded or coded as such.
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. We are also providing £26 million of revenue funding to support children and young people’s hospices for 2025/26. This is a continuation of the funding which until recently was known as the children and young people’s hospice grant.