Palliative and End-of-life Care: Funding

Baroness Hollins Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is quite right to raise this, and I can give her that assurance. She raises the point about identification of people with specific needs. I am interested to see that there are some very good examples of local good practice—for example, in Dorset, where they have proactively gone out to identify who needs palliative and end-of-life care. By so doing, they have raised the percentage of the local population who should be receiving it. That is a model we will want to look at. With regard to those who have particular needs, as the noble Baroness describes, I think that model will be helpful too.

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister has rightly pointed to the growing need for excellent palliative care close to home, and I am glad of that, but I wonder whether she is aware of the Hospice UK report pointing to the number of redundancies occurring across the sector. In the context of the 2022 Act, which required the NHS to commission adequate NHS care, this seems to be rather urgent, not just to provide good care for people but to reduce the impact on the acute hospital sector of not providing palliative care.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is right in her observations, and we certainly recognise that times are difficult, particularly for many voluntary and charitable organisations including hospices, for example, due to the increased cost of living. We are working alongside key partners and NHS England to proactively engage with stakeholders, including the voluntary sector and independent hospices, because we want to understand the issues they face and to seek solutions to them.