Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to improve palliative and end-of-life care for LGBT people.

Our ambition is for everyone approaching the end of life to receive high quality care that reflects their individual needs, choices and preferences. The Government set out its commitment to everyone at the end of life in the Government response to the independent Review of Choice in End of Life Care. To fulfil the pledge in the response to support local leaders to prioritise and improve care, the Government is writing to Health and Wellbeing Boards to remind them of their duty to end of life care.

The NHS England End of Life Care Programme Team have scheduled a webinar on inequalities, featuring Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) issues, aimed at health and care staff, providers, and commissioners in February 2017. NHS England is also a member of the ‘Ambitions partnership for Palliative and End of Life Care’, a national partnership of 27 statutory and non-statutory organisations who published the ‘Ambitions framework: National framework for local action’ in 2015. The framework centres on six Ambitions, underpinned by a number of building blocks which need to be in place for high quality palliative and end of life care to be a reality. The second of the six Ambitions is “Each person gets fair access to care” which focuses on eliminating inequality. The Ambitions Partnership has undertaken a ‘deep dive’ discussion on inequalities, which included a specific discussion on issues for LGBT people, and are planning a follow up discussion.