Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of trends in the level of the utilisation of hospice beds on NHS capacity and costs; and if he will make it his policy to allocate £100 million funding for hospices in 2025-26 and a further £100 million in April 2026.

As hospices are independent, charitable organisations, the Department and NHS England do not collect data on the level of utilisation of hospices. Whilst the majority of palliative and end of life care is provided by National Health Service staff and services, we recognise the vital part that hospices also play in providing support to people at the end of life and their loved ones, as well as alleviating pressure on NHS services.

In December 2024, we announced that we were providing £100 million of capital funding for eligible adult and children’s hospices in England. This was split across two financial years, with hospices receiving £25 million to spend in 2024/25 and £75 million to spend in 2025/26.

I am pleased to say that we can now confirm we are providing a further £25 million in capital funding for hospices to spend in 2025/26.

Furthermore, children and young people’s hospices have received £26 million of revenue funding for 2025/26 and we are also providing £80 million of revenue funding for children and young people’s hospices over the next three financial years, from 2026/27 to 2028/29, giving them stability to plan ahead and focus on what matters most, caring for their patients.

We are in a challenging fiscal position across the board. At this time, we are not in a position to offer any additional funding beyond that outlined above. However, we are trying to support the hospice sector in other ways.

The Government is developing a Palliative Care and End of Life Care Modern Service Framework (MSF) for England. As part of the MSF, we will consider contracting and commissioning arrangements. We recognise that there is currently a mix of contracting models in the hospice sector. By supporting integrated care boards 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.