Vital Signs: Palliative & end of life care

Briefing · Parliament

MPs and peers clash over hospice funding pressures, pension access for the terminally ill, and the stalled assisted dying Bill

1. 01The fate of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill dominated a Westminster Hall debate on parliamentary procedure on 8 June 2026, with Lewis Atkinson (Labour, Sunderland Central) and Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire) among those arguing that Lords behaviour amounted to obstruction, while John Lamont (Conservative, Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk), Jim Allister (Traditional Unionist Voice, North Antrim) and Ashley Dalton (Labour, West Lancashire) defended the Lords' scrutiny role. Liam Conlon (Labour, Beckenham and Penge) used the same debate to call for palliative care commitments to be protected regardless of the Bill's outcome.
2. 02Hospice funding emerged as a recurring concern across multiple sessions. Caroline Johnson (Conservative, Sleaford and North Hykeham) tabled new clauses in Health Bill committee on 16 July 2026 seeking three-year funding settlements for hospices, arguing that national insurance rises had placed the sector under severe strain; minister Karin Smyth (Labour, Bristol South) replied that both that measure and a separate proposal to collect data on patients dying while waiting for end-of-life care were likely to be addressed by a modern service framework due in the autumn.
3. 03In a Lords debate on 25 June 2026, Baroness Cass (Crossbench) warned that statutory funding for children's hospices covered only 25 per cent of expenditure, and that if properly funded community services were not maintained, care would shift back into hospitals. Monica Harding (Liberal Democrat, Esher and Walton) raised the same concern in Business of the House questions, noting that Princess Alice Hospice in her constituency met only one third of local need on its current funding.
4. 04A Lords question session on 30 June 2026 secured a government commitment to review pension access rules for terminally ill people. Lord Livermore (Labour) confirmed the Government would examine inconsistencies across private pension schemes and consider what changes were needed, after Lord Pitt-Watson (Labour) highlighted that the definition of terminal illness differed between pensions regulation and DWP rules, and Baroness Kramer (Liberal Democrat) noted that younger people dying of terminal illness would never receive the state pension they had contributed towards.
5. 05Paul Foster (Labour, South Ribble) raised at Prime Minister's Questions on 10 June 2026 what he described as a failure by integrated care boards to fund medicines and pharmacy provision for hospices separately from core grants, and outlined his private member's Bill, dubbed St Catherine's law, to place an explicit duty on ICBs to do so. Sir Keir Starmer replied that ICBs were responsible for commissioning decisions in this area and offered to discuss the matter further.