Contribution
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne) on securing this important debate and on his work to raise funds for this important cause. I will look on YouTube later to see whether I can find the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) playing the trombone; I am sure it will be a great rendition.
Losing a child is every parent’s very worst nightmare, but every day parents throughout the country are caring for children with life-limiting diseases. There are now 99,000 seriously ill children and their families in the UK. For those families the children’s hospices are, as we have heard today, a necessary lifeline. As an NHS consultant paediatrician, children’s palliative care is an issue close to my heart and I have cared for many children with life-limiting illnesses. I have also been the person who has delivered that bad news and been there through families’ journeys, and also in those final moments.
My role as a politician now gives me the opportunity to stand here and advocate for those families and those children, and to use this platform as a vehicle for positive change to make the treatment and care for those children much better. It is an opportunity I have taken before. I was pleased to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) talk about Acorns hospice. In 2019, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) and I co-chaired the all-party parliamentary group for children who need palliative care, and heard of the financial difficulties faced by Acorns and other hospices. Our campaign, and an Adjournment debate held in July 2019, led to an announcement from the Minister at the time, my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), that the hospice grant would be doubled from £12 million to £25 million. That certainly helped the hospices then, but time has moved on.
Demand is increasing; there are more children affected, sadly; those children are living longer, which means they need the services for longer; and the complexity of the care they require has increased. In fact, on average, children’s hospices in England spent 15% more in 2023-24 compared with 2021-22. Charities have raised money to fill the gap, but we have heard that they find it more difficult to raise funds in some areas than others, depending on the relative affluence of the people who live in the area surrounding the hospice. That relates not to their generosity but simply to their means to provide extra funding. It is important that we ensure that all children have access to such services, regardless of where they live.
Progress was made in the previous Parliament on improving access to palliative care for children. As part of the Health and Care Act 2022, the Government added palliative care services to those that must be commissioned by the ICB. As part of that, £1.5 billion of extra funding was provided at national level to support ICBs with inflationary pressures, and a further £25 million was allocated in grant funding for the 2024-25 period. However, it is important to say that we still have increasing demand and we still need more funding. We also need certainty, as hospices cannot plan from year to year. They need the Government to give them the sort of certainty of financial support that they were given previously.
I am concerned about the Budget this afternoon, because we have been briefed that national insurance contributions for employers will rise. We have also been briefed that NHS direct employers will be protected, but that will not necessarily protect hospices and others who deliver healthcare services. We will look carefully at that this afternoon.
As I said, the ICBs are now responsible for allocating funding for children’s hospices, but Together for Short Lives has highlighted the variation in how they have allocated that grant. Some have paid the allocation in full, some are paying it quarterly and others have not paid at all. What steps will the Minister take to hold the ICBs to account for allocating the grant and supporting hospices?
I recognise that there is great value in the ICBs providing local services, locally commissioned, to best target local services at the population they serve, but there is also a recognition that some services are low volume but high complexity and best commissioned nationally. I urge the Minister to consider carefully whether the balance is right for children’s hospices, which are certainly relatively low-volume, high-complexity services, and whether they should be nationally commissioned. In either case, it is wrong that ICBs do not have access to the statistics showing the number of children they have to care for, because without them they cannot plan their funding. I ask the Minister to do what he can to ensure that he has the right information to make the right decision.
Many children with life-limiting conditions have cancer. The children and young people cancer taskforce was set up earlier this year to drive improvements in how we detect, treat and care for children with cancer. What is the Government’s alternative to the cancer taskforce, which has been paused, and how quickly can we expect it to be put in place?
I appreciate that it is difficult for the Minister to make commitments, given that the Budget is just a few hours away, but will he commit to reviewing the locations of children’s hospices? A report produced by the APPG for children who need palliative care—including the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh)—in conjunction with Together for Short Lives demonstrated that because children’s hospices are often set up charitably, their locations are not always spread evenly across the country, so particularly in rural areas people find it difficult to access one. Given that all children must have access to hospices, will the Minister commit to at least looking at how to ensure that access?
Will the Minister restate the Government’s commitment to the provision of short breaks? Children’s hospices provide excellent palliative care at the end of life, but they also provide significant care during life. Part of that is short break respite care, which is so valuable to many families. Will the Minister commit his Department to ensuring that is funded?