Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of the amount of choice and quality of care people available to those with terminal illnesses, their families and carers; and what steps his Department is taking to increase the amount of choice for high quality care.

The Department commissioned an independently led Review of Choice in End of Life Care which provided advice to Ministers earlier this year. The Review set out a vision for enabling greater choice and improving quality at the end of life for every dying person. This includes enabling greater use of advance care planning and electronic care records to record people’s choices and preferences, and building services around people’s needs and preferences.

We want to ensure that patients have greater choice about the care they receive at the end of their life and we are working with NHS England to see how this can best be achieved. We will set out our full response to the Choice Review in the coming months.