Hospice Funding

Gen Kitchen Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Bambos Charalambous]

The hon. Member makes an excellent point. Long-term funding is absolutely essential if hospices, particularly children’s hospices, are to be able to plan ahead.

North London Hospice is reliant on donations from the community each year to fill its £10 million funding gap, as only a small proportion of its costs are funded by the NHS. Of course, the cost of living crisis continues to eat away at people’s finances, which directly impacts on our communities’ ability to provide the vital charitable support that hospices rely on. The reality of the current state of funding is that hospices are struggling to keep up with inflation and rising costs, which is leading to services being cut. However, demand for palliative care continues to grow—for North London Hospice, it has grown at a rate of 5% year on year. The costs of running hospice services, including energy bills and the cost of paying staff a fair wage, also continue to rise rapidly.

Hospices recruit from a small pool of staff in the NHS and care sector, but they are not provided with the same Government funding to meet NHS pay levels, meaning that many hospice staff are doing the same job as their NHS colleagues but being paid less for it. As a result, Hospice UK’s figures suggest an 11% growth in payroll costs this year, which means around £130 million of additional spending that is not met by increased statutory funding. As I have mentioned, those costs are not met with additional uplifts from NHS funding or contracts, and despite a legal requirement for ICBs to commission palliative care services that meet the needs of the local population, the funding that hospices receive from ICBs varies significantly across the country and means that charitable donations make up much of their income.

[Gen Kitchen (Wellingborough) (Lab)]

As a former hospice fundraiser—it is what I did before I came here —I am grateful to the hon. Members for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) and for Darlington (Peter Gibson) for securing the debate. Part of the problem that I faced at first hand was that when I was going out to private companies, trusts and foundations in order to raise funds to increase pay with inflation, that was often the hardest thing to fundraise for. The ICB was never very forthcoming, particularly when we would enter into conversations with it in the year prior to the year being funded.

[Bambos Charalambous]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Fundraising is hard enough; inflationary costs make it much harder for fundraisers to do their excellent job of bringing an enormous amount of money together to make sure that all our hospices are run adequately.

Many hospices, like North London Hospice, will continue to operate a deficit budget for 2024-25, with the shortfall being met from reserves. Indeed, Hospice UK estimates that the sector is on track for a £77 million collective deficit for financial year 2023-24, the worst end of year figures in around 20 years of tracking. This funding model is simply unsustainable, and will undoubtedly lead to hospices cutting back essential services for patients. The issue is becoming increasingly urgent. We need to look at how hospices are funded in this country. They provide essential support; they should not be a voluntary service that is topped up by whatever fundraising is available. An integral part of our healthcare system is reliant on charitable donations. No other services are funded in that way; it is unthinkable that it would be left up to charities to plug shortfalls in maternity services, for example, so why is end of life care reliant on the kindness of strangers? It is really worrying. We need a far more secure, long-term model of funding that protects our hospices and partners them with the wider health and care system. If we do not properly support our hospices, we are in danger of losing them.