Since my first few weeks in office as the Member of Parliament for Sutton and Cheam, I have been fighting for hospices.
St Raphael’s, a vital hospice in North Cheam, have cared for so many of my constituents. They provide, as hospices across the nation do, the kind of heart-warming and dignified care that we would all want in our final days.
Theirs was one of the first emails I received in my Parliamentary inbox – and what they told me stunned me.
They were facing a one million pound deficit, forcing them to have to take agonising decisions to cut back on their services. I knew right away that they needed our support.
Fast forward a year to today, and I had the chance to present my Hospices and Healthcare (Report on Funding Bill) for its second reading in the House of Commons.
It was the culmination of months of work, and months of listening to the sector. It is clearer to me than ever that in much the same way that we need hospice care, hospices now, more than ever, need our care too.
Because St Raph’s is not alone. Too many hospices are teetering on the edge of a financial cliff-edge, and they have been reliant on personal donations for far too long. Despite playing a vital role at the heart of our healthcare system, they are too often treated as being on that system’s fringes when it comes to funding.
HospiceUK has demonstrated that less than £0.5 billion of the £1.8 billion spent on hospice care each year comes from NHS funding. The funding that they do receive from the NHS too often has not risen with inflation – and they are now being struck by the Government’s National Insurance Contributions’ tax hike.
Even when the government does sit up and pay attention to the sector – their measures have been paltry. The £100 million of capital funding announced by the Government in December was welcome, but it was a drop in the ocean.
My Bill would have compelled the government to explore options to finally reverse this trend with, at last, a long-term palliative care funding strategy through the NHS Budget to give hospices the money, and certainty, they need to keep doing their vital work.
The Government may not have taken up my Bill on this occasion, but I hope they have listened not just to my campaigns but to the voices of hospices across the country who need this to be a priority.
Because we cannot achieve the aims the government have set out for the NHS, particularly on taking care into the community, without properly funding hospice care.
It is not a “nice to have”. It should not be viewed as a supplement to our healthcare system – it should be recognised as a cornerstone of that system itself, one that holds up the rest of the world of care. It is certainly too often forgotten that were hospices not in place, dying patients would be in NHS hospitals where costs to the taxpayer are higher and beds are already full. That is to say nothing of the fact that the environment is less personal, the care less specialist and the experience often, tragically, less dignified.
A service that provides comfort, counselling and humanity ought not to be left reliant on a funding stream so dependent on whether or not a charity shop, cake sale, or other fundraising efforts reach their targets. There are fantastic fundraisers held for hospices up and down the country by brilliant, committed people who care deeply about the sector. But they should not be forced to carry the weight of such an important service on their shoulders alone.
We should be funding hospices proudly – showing everyone that ours is a country where dying patients are treated with dignity, and those who tend to them are treated as heroes.
We must fund hospices properly so that every dying patient gets the care, treatment and support they need
