Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the Children's Hospital Grant will be (a) centrally distributed, (b) ringfenced and (c) take account of the recent proposed increase in employers National Insurance contributions.

2023/24 was the final year of the Children’s Hospice Grant. In 2024/25, however, NHS England provided £25 million of funding for children and young people’s hospices, maintaining the level of funding from 2023/24.

For the first time, however, this funding was transacted by integrated care boards (ICBs), on behalf of NHS England, rather than being centrally administered as before. I am aware that the shift to dissemination via ICBs for 2024/25 has not been as smooth a transition as I would have hoped, and the Department and NHS England are learning the lessons from that experience.

We do understand that, financially, times are difficult for many voluntary and charitable organisations, including children’s hospices, due to a range of concurrent cost pressures.

I met NHS England, Together for Short Lives, and one of the chairs of the Children Who Need Palliative Care All-Party Parliamentary Group to discuss children’s palliative and end of life care, and this funding stream was discussed at length at that meeting. We are working very closely with NHS England to get the funding arrangements for 2025/26 confirmed as a matter of urgency.

On the increase in employer National Insurance contributions, we have taken necessary decisions to fix the foundations in the public finances at Autumn Budget 2024, which enabled the Spending Review settlement of a £22.6 billion increase in resource spending for the Department from 2023/24 outturn to 2025/26.

The employer National Insurance rise will be implemented in April 2025. We will set out further plans in due course, including through NHS Planning Guidance.