Asked by: Lauren Edwards (Labour - Rochester and Strood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that hospice contracts reflect (a) the cost of the services they provide and (b) the needs of their local populations.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for the commissioning of palliative care and end of life care services, to meet the needs of their local populations. To support ICBs in this duty, NHS England has published statutory guidance and service specifications. NHS England has 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.
Whilst the majority of palliative care and end of life care is provided by National Health Service staff and services, we recognise the vital part that voluntary sector organisations, including hospices, also play in providing support to people at the end of life and their loved ones.
Most hospices are charitable, independent organisations which receive some statutory funding for providing NHS services. The amount of funding each charitable hospice receives varies both within and between ICB areas. This will vary depending on the demand in that ICB area but will also be dependent on the totality and type of palliative and end of life care provision from both NHS and non-NHS services, including charitable hospices, within each ICB area.
The Government and the NHS will closely monitor the shift towards the strategic commissioning of palliative care 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.
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.
Additionally, 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 in revenue funding to support children and young people’s hospices for 2025/26. I can also now confirm the continuation of this vital funding for the three years of the next Spending Review period, from 2026/27 to 2028/29 inclusive. This funding will see approximately £26 million, adjusted for inflation, allocated to children and young people’s hospices in England each year, via their local ICBs and on behalf of NHS England, as happened in 2024/25 and 2025/26. This amounts to approximately £80 million over the next three years.
Asked by: Lauren Edwards (Labour - Rochester and Strood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what general training all hospital and general practice staff are expected to receive in order to understand the needs of neuro-divergent and autistic patients; and what plans he has to improve the quality of such training in the future.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Under the Health and Care Act 2022, all Care Quality Commission registered providers are required to ensure their staff receive specific training on learning disability and autism, appropriate to their role. This training will ensure staff can provide safe, informed care which caters for the needs of people with a learning disability and autistic people. The Oliver McGowan Code of Practice has been published to guide providers on how to meet the statutory requirement on learning disability and autism training under the Health and Care Act 2022. The Code became final on 6 September 2025. The Code sets out four standards which outline minimum training requirements including: expectations on training content at different levels; that training is co-produced and co-delivered with people with lived experience; and how training should be monitored and evaluated. The Code is available at the following link:
We are rolling out the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism (Oliver’s Training) to the health and adult social care workforce, which is the government’s preferred training package. Over three million people have completed the first part of this training, which is freely available on the NHS elearning for health hub. A long-term independent evaluation conducted by the University of Leicester is underway to assess the delivery and impact of Oliver’s Training.
Asked by: Lauren Edwards (Labour - Rochester and Strood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to increase the number of General Practitioners in rural communities.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We acknowledge the urgent challenge of ensuring that rural areas, including West Dorset, have the resources to continue serving their patients. To address this, we will increase capacity in general practice (GP) and ensure rural areas have the necessary workforce to provide integrated, patient-centred services.
We are committed to training thousands more GPs across the country, including in rural areas. We have also committed to recruiting over 1,000 newly qualified GPs through an £82 million boost to the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme, which will increase the number of appointments delivered in GPs. This will increase capacity, secure the future pipeline of GPs, and alleviate the pressure on those currently working in the system.