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 reduce variation in the approaches of commissioners in meeting the local population's needs for palliative and end of life care services.

Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for commissioning palliative care services to meet the reasonable needs of their population. To support ICBs in this duty, NHS England has published statutory guidance and service specifications.

This further clarified in the recently published Strategic Commissioning Framework and Medium Term Planning Guidance, which makes clear the expectation that ICBs should understand current and projected service utilisation and costs, creating an overall plan to more effectively meet these needs through neighbourhood health.

The Government is developing a Palliative Care and End of Life Care Modern Service Framework for England. I refer the Hon. Members to the Written Ministerial Statement HCWS1087, which I gave to the House on 24 November 2025.

NHS England has developed a palliative and end of life care dashboard, which brings together all relevant local data in one place. The dashboard helps commissioners understand the palliative and end of life care needs of their local population, enabling ICBs to put plans in place to address and track the improvement of health inequalities, and ensure that funding is distributed fairly, based on prevalence.