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 provide emergency day-to-day funding to hospices; and whether he will commit to releasing (a) £100 million in emergency funding now and (b) a further £100 million in April 2026 to stabilise hospice services and protect patient care.

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

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.

We are 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.

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 supporting 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.