Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that hospice care services across England are sufficiently funded; and what assessment he has made of the potential impact of an ageing population on demand for palliative care services.

Whilst the majority of palliative and end of life care is provided by National Health Service staff and services, we recognise the vital part that voluntary sector organisations, including hospices, also play in providing support to people at end of life and their loved ones.

Most hospices are charitable, independent organisations which receive some statutory funding for providing NHS services. The amount of funding each charitable hospice receives varies both within and between integrated care board (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 are pleased to confirm that the Government has released the first £25 million tranche of the £100 million capital funding, with Hospice UK kindly allocating and distributing the money to hospices throughout England. An additional £75 million will be available from April. We are also providing £26 million revenue funding to support children and young people’s hospices for 2025/26. This is a continuation of the funding which until recently was known as the children and young people’s hospice grant.

No formal assessment has been made of the potential impact of an ageing population on demand for palliative care services, but we know that currently approximately 600,000 people die per year in the United Kingdom. We are aware that the Office for National Statistics has projected that, by 2040, approximately 800,000 people a year will die in the UK, meaning that, the number of people needing palliative and end of life care is expected to increase by 42% by then.