Health minister announces £126m funding boost for hospices
In the Commons Karin Smyth, the health minister, is now responding to an urgent question on hospice funding.
She says the governments wants a society where everyone can get high quality care. It also wants to shift care out of hospitals. And hospices will play a big part in that, she says.
She says the government recognises the pressures facing hospices over a number of years.
Today she can announce the biggest investment into hospices and end of life care for a generation.
She says there will be a £100m boost for adult and children’s hospices to ensure they have the best physical environment for care, and £26m to support children and young people’s hospices.
She says the details of the funding allocation will be set out in the new year.
Key events
Commenting on the announcement, Helen Morgan, the Lib Dem health spokesperson, said:
This extra funding will be welcome for hospices, patients who need end-of-life care, and their loved ones, and it must be followed by a real focus on improving end-of-life care in the new 10-year NHS plan.
However, it is deeply disappointing that ministers are still not protecting hospices and other crucial health and care providers – including GPs, dentists, pharmacists and care homes – from their national insurance hike.
Hospice UK, which represents the hospice sector, has welcomed the government’s announcement. Its CEO, Toby Porter, said:
Today’s announcement will be hugely welcomed by hospices, and those who rely on their services. Hospices not only provide vital care for patients and families, but also relieve pressure on the NHS.
This funding will allow hospices to continue to reach hundreds of thousands of people every year with high-quality, compassionate care.
Martin Vickers (Con) accused the government of “giving with one hand and taking with another”. He asked when individual hospices would find out how much extra they would receive.
Smyth said those allocations would be made in the new year, after consultations with the sector.
Paul Holmes (Con) said it beggared belief that Smyth expected MPs to be grateful to the government for giving money to hospices that it had taken away in the first place. He said a hospice in his constuency would need an extra £1m to cover the cost of the national insurance increase. He asked the minister if she could assure him that the extra funding announced today would cover that.
Smyth said what beggared belief was that Tory MPs were defending the record of the last government on hospice funding. She did not address the specific question about the hospice in Holmes’ Hamble Valley constituency.
Minister refuses to confirm extra hospice funding will fully compensate sector for national insurance increase
Bob Blackman (Con) told Karin Smyth she still had not said whether or not this extra money would fully compensate hospices for the national insurance rise. He asked her again to answer.
Smyth sidestepped the question, saying the Conservatives had 14 years to sort out hospice funding.
Tories suggest extra money for hospices won’t fully compensate them for extra costs caused by budget
In her response to the statement from Karin Smyth, Caroline Johnson, the shadow health minister, suggested the extra money for hospices would not fully compensate the extra costs the sector is facing because of the national insurance increase and the rise in the living wage. She said:
They are taking millions of pounds of hospices and palliative care charities and then think they should be grateful when they give them some of it back. This is socialism at its finest.
Smyth said that Johnson should be welcoming the announcement, and that under the Conservatives the sector was not properly funded.
Here is an extract from the Department for Health and Social Care’s news release about the hospice announcement. (See 10.47am.)
The biggest investment in a generation for hospices has been announced by the government today, ensuring that hospices can continue to deliver the highest quality end of life care possible for their patients, families, and loved ones.
The £100m funding will help hospices this year and next to provide the best end of life care to patients and their families in a supportive and dignified physical environment.
Hospices for children and young people will also receive a further £26m revenue funding for 2025/26 through what until recently was known as the Children’s Hospice Grant …
This investment will go towards helping hospices to improve their buildings, equipment, and accommodation to ensure that patients continue to receive the best care possible.
That will include refurbishing bedrooms and bathrooms for patients and providing comfortable overnight facilities for families, improving IT systems making it easier for GPs and hospitals to share vital data on patients.
The money will also help towards improving garden and outdoor spaces so patients and their families can spend time outdoors in greener and cleaner spaces.
It will also help to develop and bettering outreach services to support people in their own homes when needed.
Health minister announces £126m funding boost for hospices
In the Commons Karin Smyth, the health minister, is now responding to an urgent question on hospice funding.
She says the governments wants a society where everyone can get high quality care. It also wants to shift care out of hospitals. And hospices will play a big part in that, she says.
She says the government recognises the pressures facing hospices over a number of years.
Today she can announce the biggest investment into hospices and end of life care for a generation.
She says there will be a £100m boost for adult and children’s hospices to ensure they have the best physical environment for care, and £26m to support children and young people’s hospices.
She says the details of the funding allocation will be set out in the new year.
The number of people in hospital in England with flu has jumped 41% in a week and continues to be more than four times the number at this point last year, PA reports. PA says:
An average of 2,629 flu patients were in beds in England each day last week, 2,504 in general or acute (G&A) beds and 125 in critical care, NHS figures show.
This is up 41% from a total of 1,861 patients the previous week, when 1,795 were in G&A beds and 66 were in critical care.
It is also more than four times the figure at this stage in 2023, when the total stood at 648, and higher than the equivalent week in 2022, when the average was 2,088.
The figures have been published in the latest weekly snapshot of the performance of hospitals in England this winter.
British troops could start training Ukrainian troops in Ukraine, John Healey suggests
British troops could start training Ukrainian troops in Ukraine itself, John Healey, the defence secretary, has suggested. He revealed this in an interview with Larisa Brown in the Times. In her story Brown reports:
John Healey said the UK needed to “make the training a better fit for what the Ukrainians need” as he left the door open for it to take place in the war-torn country instead of Britain.
“We [need to] make it easier to the Ukrainians to access and we [need to] work with the Ukrainians to help them motivate and mobilise more recruits,” he said to The Times on a visit to Ukraine.
Asked if this meant extending training of Ukrainian recruits inside the UK to Ukraine itself, he said: “We will look wherever we can to respond to what the Ukrainians want. They are the ones fighting.”
Keir Starmer has met the Sultan of Brunei at Downing Street, PA Media reports. PA says:
The prime minister greeted Haji Hassanal Bolkiah at the door of No 10.
They then held a meeting in the White Room.
Starmer praised the “strong relationship” between the two countries.
He said he and the sultan would talk about the renewal of the garrison agreement between the two nations, and wider issues of trade and security.
At 10.30am there will be an urgent question in the Commons on hospice funding. It has been tabled by Caroline Johnson, a shadow health minister. She may be hoping to clear up the confusion about what the government will do to compensate hospices for the extra staff costs arising because of the employers’ national insurance rise in the budget, and about when the announcement is coming. Yesterday Wes Streeting, the health secretary, told there would be a decision before Christmas. But at PMQs Keir Starmer said it was coming in the new year.
Then there are four ministerial statement. After the usual Thursday statement on forthcoming business by Lucy Powell, the leader of the Commons, we’ve got:
Average water bill in England and Wales to rise by 36% over five years
Water bills in England and Wales will rise by 36% over the next five years, as suppliers were accused of forcing struggling households to pay for years of underinvestment to fix leaky pipes and cut pollution, Jasper Jolly and Helena Horton report.
What No 10 said about Starmer’s conversation with Trump yesterday
For the record, here is the full readout from No 10 about the conversation between Keir Starmer and Donald Trump yesterday.
The prime minister spoke to President-elect Donald Trump this afternoon from Downing Street.
The prime minister began by congratulating President-elect Trump on his recent team appointments and President-elect Trump warmly recounted his meeting with His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales in Paris earlier this month.
Both agreed on their joint ambition to strengthen the close and historic relationship between the UK and the US. They looked forward to working together on shared priorities, including international security and delivering economic growth and prosperity.
Turning to global conflicts, the prime minister reiterated the need for allies to stand together with Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression and to ensure Ukraine is in the strongest possible position.
On the Middle East, the prime minister underscored the need to work together to ensure peace and security in the region.
They agreed to keep in touch and looked forward to seeing one another at the earliest opportunity.
Keir Starmer to be questioned by liaison committee as No 10 firms up Trump links
Good morning. It is the last day the House of Commons is sitting before the Christmas recess, and the main event will be in a committee room in Portcullis House where Keir Starmer will have his first question session with the liaison committee, the ‘prefects’ club’ comprising the chairs of all the other Commons select committees. For 90 minutes he will take questions on the economy, public services and global affairs from MPs who know their subjects pretty well. Most of them are Labour MPs, but they include people who have only become select committee chairs because, despite serving on the front bench before the election, they were not appointed ministers, and so it is wrong to assume they are all Starmer loyalists.
In theory, 90 minutes of intelligent questioning with the PM should produce a decent amount of news. In reality, past liaison committee hearings have often failed to produce much beyond a rehash of familiar No 10 lines to take. But we live in hope.
Relations with the US are almost certain to come up, and Starmer may be asked about an overnight story that suggests Starmer is firming up links with the incoming Donald Trump administration. Yesterday Starmer and Trump spoke on the phone. In its readout, No 10 says:
The prime minister began by congratulating President-elect Trump on his recent team appointments and President-elect Trump warmly recounted his meeting with His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales in Paris earlier this month.
Both agreed on their joint ambition to strengthen the close and historic relationship between the UK and the US. They looked forward to working together on shared priorities, including international security and delivering economic growth and prosperity.
No 10 did not say which of the Trump appointments Starmer wanted to applaud. Some of them have horrified progressive opinion around the world. CBS has a useful list of all the names here.
And, overnight, the Telegraph and the Sun have revealed that Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, travelled to the US last week for talks with Trump’s team. The Guardian has confirmed the story. In his Telegraph story Ben Riley-Smith says:
Morgan McSweeney travelled to Florida to meet Susie Wiles, the political strategist who masterminded Mr Trump’s re-election campaign and will be his chief of staff in office.
Mr McSweeney also had policy discussions in Washington with Mike Waltz, the congressman who has been named as Mr Trump’s next national security adviser.
Riley-Smith also includes this quote from a “senior Downing Street source” summarising the position.
The mood music was very warm. President Trump is nothing but warm about the UK.
As the year closes, Team Starmer is confident the UK is in a good position for a strong bilateral relationship with the new presidency.
(Do they really talk like that in Westminster? I’m afraid they do.)
In his version of the story, Harry Cole from the Sun says Jonathan Powell, Starmer’s national security adviser, also attended the meeting.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Steve Reed, the environment secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2.30pm: Keir Starmer gives evidence to the liaison committee.
At some point today we are also expecting Downing Street to release a list of new peers.
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