Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of workforce shortages on the delivery of palliative care services.

The delivery of palliative and end of life care services is a devolved matter. We want to assure ourselves and the National Health Service in England that it has access to the workforce it needs in the years ahead to ensure that patients, including those at end of life, are cared for by the right professional, when and where they need it. We will need to do this in light of the 10-Year Health Plan.

In England, palliative and end of life care is wide-ranging, provided by generalist as well as specialist healthcare professionals, and is not disease/diagnosis specific. A large proportion of palliative and end of life care is not provided by palliative care specialists and, therefore, it is difficult to quantify the totality of the NHS workforce providing palliative and end of life care.