Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to ensure that hospices receive the funding required to raise staff pay in line with nationally agreed NHS pay rises.

Palliative care services are included in the list of services an integrated care board (ICB) must commission. To support ICBs in this duty, NHS England has published statutory guidance and service specifications.

Hospices, as independent organisations, are free to develop and adapt their own terms and conditions of employment and, therefore, it is for them to determine what is affordable within the financial model they operate, and how to recoup any additional costs they face, including what contractual arrangements are reached with their commissioners.

NHS England uprates national allocations in line with the pay rises for ICBs. It is down to the local contractual arrangements, whether this includes the increases for pay rises or not, as to what the hospice can afford. There is, therefore, no single model which is consistent across England.

The Government is developing a Palliative Care and End-of-Life Care Modern Service Framework (MSF) for England. The MSF will drive improvements in the services that patients and their families receive at the end-of-life and enable ICBs to address challenges in access, quality and sustainability through the delivery of high-quality, personalised care.

We will consider contracting and commissioning arrangements as part of our MSF. We recognise that there is currently a mix of contracting models in the hospice sector. By supporting ICBs to commission more strategically, we can move away from grant and block contract models. In the long term, this will aid sustainability and help hospices’ ability to plan ahead.

I refer the Hon. Member to the Written Ministerial Statement HCWS1087 I gave to the House on 24 November 2025.