Hospices in England will receive a £100m-plus boost to their funding amid worries that some end-of-life services could close because of the impact of the increase to employer national insurance contributions and rising wages.
However, the bulk of the money will be ringfenced for capital spending, such as improving accommodation for patients and their loved ones, and cannot be used to help with day-to-day running costs.
The hospice sector said that while the money was welcome, it was not an answer to recurring cost pressures.
The investment, announced in the Commons by the health minister Karin Smyth, was billed as “the biggest investment into hospices and end-of-life care in a generation”.
“This government recognises the range of cost pressures the hospice sector has been facing over a number of years,” she told MPs.
The funding is in two parts: £100m capital funding for the 170 adult and children’s hospices in England for this year and 2025-26; and a further £26m in revenue support in 2025-26 for the 35 hospices that help children only, in a continuation of the longstanding children’s hospice grant.
“The government has recognised the very real financial strain that adult and children’s hospices have been under for some time. The additional support will ease that strain significantly”, said Toby Porter, the chief executive of Hospice UK.
Hospices will use the £100m to refurbish bedrooms and bathrooms for patients and provide comfortable overnight accommodation for their families, and overhaul their IT systems to enable better communication between staff, GPs and hospital personnel. It will also help them care better for people being looked after at home in their final days, including by buying cars for hospice staff to visit them.
But the shadow health minister, Caroline Johnson, whose urgent question on the issue in the Commons led to Smyth announcing the funding, said she was not certain that hospices, most of which are run as charities but which also receive government funding for their NHS-related work, would be better off.
Johnson and other Conservative MPs asked Smyth to say whether hospices would be better off overall given the impact of the rise in employers’ national insurance, announced in the budget, which hospice organisations believed could cost a combined £30m a year. Smyth declined to comment.
Hospices in England receive more than £400m a year from the government, about a third of their income.
The wider role of end-of-life care has come into focus after the vote by MPs at the end of last month to back a bill which, if passed, would legalise assisted dying in England and Wales under certain limited circumstances.
Matthew Reed, the chief executive of Marie Curie, which operates a series of hospices, welcomed the extra money. But he added: “A restricted and one-off investment is not going to meet the recurring cost pressures and ongoing needs of the sector – including the long-term implications of additional national insurance contributions, ongoing pressures as a result of rising costs of pay, and increased numbers of people dying over the next 20 years.”
The health and social care secretary, Wes Streeting, in a statement released to coincide with the Commons announcement, said: “Hospices provide the care and support for patients and families at the most difficult time, so it is only right they are given the financial support to provide these services. This package will ensure they will be able to continue to deliver the compassionate care everyone deserves as they come to the end of their life in the best possible environment.”
The Liberal Democrats said that while the extra money was welcome, it was “deeply disappointing” there had not been a national insurance exemption for hospices.
