Gregory Stafford

Well, the simple fact is that what the hon. Members and his Front-Bench team are doing is ensuring that the NHS is worse off, because raising the money will have a greater impact on the rest of the service. [Interruption.] The Minister for Care is shouting at me from the Front Bench, and I am sure that, in his response to the debate, he can outline whether he and his team knew about the national insurance contribution rises and whether they planned for them. The other part of this is the workforce, who have been touched on briefly. There is a real shortage of qualified healthcare professionals. Vacancy rates for hospice nurses have risen to nearly 19%, and the corollary is that staff morale is low. Again, the Government need to make sure that the long-term workforce plan that they and the NHS are rolling out includes how we will ensure that hospice staff are part of the long-term funding. Hospice UK has warned, seriously, that without urgent action, some, indeed many, hospices may be forced to close their doors in the next 12 months. I have some requests of the Government. First, as the hon. Member for Birmingham Erdington (Paulette Hamilton) said, we need them to commit to a long-term sustainable funding model for hospices. That is not to say that hospices should be brought into the central NHS—I personally believe that the innovation of the hospice sector is down to its independence from the NHS—but they need multi-year funding to understand where they stand. Secondly, as has been mentioned, we need to scrap the postcode lottery that comes from the integrated care boards. Some kind of ringfenced funding, particularly for children’s hospice grants, would prevent a lot of the delays and inequities in the service. As I said, we need to make sure that hospice staff are integrated into the NHS long-term workforce plan and are paid in parity with similar NHS roles.