Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what information his Department holds on the proportion of the operating costs of (a) The Myton Hospices and (b) The Shakespeare Hospice is met by NHS Coventry and Warwickshire; and what assessment he has made of trends in the level of variation between integrated care boards in the share of hospice costs they fund.

As hospices are independent charitable organisations, neither the Department nor NHS England collect data on their financial accounts, therefore, we do not hold information on what proportion of operating costs are met by the NHS Coventry and Warwickshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) for either The Myton Hospice or The Shakespeare Hospice.

We know that the amount of funding each charitable hospice receives varies both within and between ICB areas. This will vary depending on demand in that ICB area but will also be dependent on the totality and type of palliative and end of life care provision from both NHS and non-NHS services, including charitable hospices, within each ICB area.

We recognise that there is currently a mix of contracting models in the hospice sector, with some ICBs using NHS standard contracts and others using grant funding, and sometimes a combination of both. We want to shift towards the strategic commissioning of hospice services and away from short term grants.

We are developing a Modern Service Framework (MSF) for Palliative Care and End-of-Life Care and recently published an interim update on how it is progressing.

In the interim update, we set out that we expect all ICBs to complete an integrated needs assessment, to gain a detailed understanding of their current and future population, including people of all ages with palliative care and end-of-life care needs. We are asking ICBs to move to sustainable contracting of adult, and children and young people’s, hospice services, based on their integrated needs assessment. Initially, this will involve the move away from short-term grant funding for adult hospice services from 2027/28.

The MSF will embed palliative care and end-of-life care within a strategic commissioning model that is centred on clear and transparent contractual arrangements for commissioned palliative care activity across all providers, including hospices, to meet population health needs, with explicit regard to reducing inequalities and improving outcomes for underserved and disadvantaged groups.