Hospice Services: Support

Peter Gibson Excerpts

Wednesday 14th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Paul Holmes) on securing this important debate, and I extend my condolences to him on the loss of his office manager. I draw the attention of the Chamber to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, particularly as a trustee of North Yorkshire Hospice Care, and to my co-chairmanship of the APPG on hospice and end of life care. I put on record my thanks to everybody in our hospices—the nurses, the doctors, the trustees, the volunteers and the fundraisers—for all that they do.

As my hon. Friend mentioned, the APPG recently published a report entitled “The Lasting Impact of COVID-19 on Death, Dying and Bereavement”. I know that the Minister has received a copy of that report, because I personally handed it to her. One of the key points in it was about sustainability of funding for end of life care and bereavement services, and about the need for funding to them to provide their care confidently, commissioning for the years ahead, not just the year ahead.

I recently convened a meeting of all the MPs and hospices in the Tees valley, and there is a very sad picture. In Darlington, St Teresa’s Hospice is posting a £541,000 deficit this year. Teesside Hospice is posting a deficit of £400,000 this year, and Alice House Hospice in Hartlepool has had to close a unit. It does not have to be this way. Ask anyone where they want to die; they will tell you that they want to die at home, surrounded by their loved ones. Our hospices provide support to enable that to happen. Given a choice between a hospital and a hospice, people will choose a hospice.

We know that deaths in hospital are costly, blocking beds and often giving people a less than good death. I want to see everyone have access to a good death, and I want the NHS to save money and unblock beds. That can be achieved with proper commissioning and support for palliative care, as required by the Health and Care Act 2022, not just in Darlington, Teesside or North Yorkshire, but right across the country. We would not, in this day and age, fund maternity care by running bake sales, skydiving or wing-walking, but it seems perfectly acceptable to many that that is how we should fund palliative care. It is not right and it is not fair, and the time for dealing with it is now.

UK hospices are budgeting for a deficit of £186 million this year. Our integrated care boards must step up to the plate, commissioning and paying for the hospice care that their community needs and, at the same time, safeguarding these institutions that are so integral to our communities, saving the NHS money and reducing bed blocking. It really has the potential to be a win-win situation. I implore the Minister to do everything in her power to get this sorted, once and for all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Whately]

I will not commit to getting involved in a specific conversation between a hospice and an ICB. That would not be the right thing for me to do as a Minister. The hon. Gentleman and I have had several conversations over the years that I have been a Minister, so he will not be surprised to hear that I have been seeking transparency about the extent to which the funding has or has not gone to hospices. I have been seeking data on whether the rates being paid to hospices have or have not gone up so that we have transparency about the extent to which the funding that has gone to integrated care boards to support with inflation is getting through to the services that need support.

[Peter Gibson]

Although I acknowledge and appreciate everything the Government did to support hospices during covid, it is simply not the case that every ICB across the country is passing the right amount of money to the hospices from which it commissions services. Will the Minister commit to publishing information about which ICBs are stepping up to the plate and fulfilling their statutory obligations, and which are not?

[Helen Whately]

I commit to continuing to dig into getting visibility on the extent to which extra funding is going through to hospices. Of course, there is a balance to be struck when giving integrated care boards the freedom to do what we want them to do, which is to understand fully the needs for care in their populations, and make good decisions about how they fund care for their populations. None of us believes that a Minister in Westminster has the answers about what should happen and exactly how funding should be distributed in every single one of our communities. I will continue to get that visibility, because it is important that we know the extent to which our hospices are getting support for the extra financial pressures that we have been discussing.