Oral Answers to Questions

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

1. What progress his Department has made on integrating and improving care provided outside hospitals.

[The Minister for Community and Social Care (Alistair Burt)]

Happy new year, Mr Speaker—and happy new year to the familiar faces opposite in the shadow Cabinet.

The Government are committed to transforming out-of-hospital care for everyone, in every community, by 2020. We have seen excellent progress in areas led by the integration pioneers such as Torbay and Greenwich. The Government remain fully committed to delivering integration through programmes such as the better care fund and the vanguards.

[John Howell]

Seventy per cent. of people would prefer to die in their own homes, yet we still allow 60% of people to die in hospital. This has to change, as it has in the Netherlands owing to the better social care provided outside hospitals. What message would the Minister give to clinical commissioning groups, such as mine, which are trying hard to bring this about and to integrate services?

[Alistair Burt]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this issue. We share his view: we want to see greater choice in end-of-life care so that people are able to be cared for and die in the place they choose and which is appropriate to their needs, whether that is a hospice, a hospital or their own home. The recent Choice review set out a vision of enabling greater choice at the end of life. I am working with NHS England to see how this can be best achieved and the Government expect to comment on that soon.