Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people in England in receipt of free social care are terminally ill.

Local authorities have a duty to assess the needs of any person for whom the authority may arrange social care and who may be in need of such care. They have a further duty to decide, having regard to the results of the assessment, what, if any, care and support they should provide to meet the individual's needs. Where a local authority decides to arrange care and support it will carry out a financial assessment to decide what an individual can afford to contribute towards the cost. Appeals against decisions by local authorities are considered locally. Information about appeals is not collected centrally.

In its 2011 report, the independent Palliative Care Funding Review recommended the provision of free social care at the end of life. A series of palliative care funding pilots were established to test the review's recommendations, and these completed their work in March 2014. NHS England is currently analysing the financial data collected from the pilots. Once this analysis has been completed, a decision will be made on the issue of free social care at the end of life, taking into account this analysis and wider policy and financial considerations.