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 trends in the level of geographic inequalities in access to high-quality children’s palliative care.

We recognise that there are currently inequalities in access to, and the quality of, palliative care and end-of-life care. This is one of the reasons why we are developing a Modern Service Framework (MSF) for Palliative Care and End-of-Life Care.

On 4 June, we published an interim update on the MSF in the form of a Written Ministerial Statement, which is available at the following link:

https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2026-06-04/hcws88

The MSF will provide a clinically led, evidence-based framework to support sustained improvement in patient and carer outcomes, including for children and young people with palliative care needs, by reducing both inequality and unwarranted variation.

The MSF will focus on reducing unwarranted variation in access, experience, and outcomes, ensuring that everyone can receive high‑quality, personalised care in the right place at the end of life. The MSF will address inequalities in access to palliative care and end-of-life care by embedding a stronger focus on identifying, measuring, and reducing health inequalities across the system.

It will support a shift towards strategic, population‑based commissioning, enabling integrated care boards to plan and deliver services based on a clear understanding of local need, including underserved and disadvantaged groups.

The MSF will also strengthen the use of data and evidence, including metrics that are under development, to help systems identify gaps in provision, track progress, and ensure funding and services are distributed more equitably.