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Children’s Hospices

The hon. Gentleman is quite right, and I join him in commending the work done by many people who put themselves out no matter what the weather, and who work hard to raise much-needed money from communities that want those services. Given the lack of funding, one might wonder whether the Government genuinely accept the need for children’s hospices. The national service framework, however, states:"““Palliative care services can include short-term breaks, counselling, family support services, pain management and symptom control.””" Those services, the framework states, should be"““easily accessible, timely and in the setting of the family’s choice.””" It goes on to say that co-ordination and close liaison between agencies, including children’s hospices, is thus essential. There is therefore strong Government commitment, which has been utterly ignored by PCTs. As for adult palliative care commitments by the Government, in the Labour election manifesto we gave a commitment to increase funding for palliative care, but that does not extend to children. We have the perverse situation at the moment whereby a 17-year-old with cancer is not deemed suitable to fund, whereas an adult is. Can we really be in a position to say that a child under 18 cannot be funded to die with all the support that a hospice can give, whereas a young person over 18 can have funded support? Does the Minister not agree that our manifesto commitment should cover children as well as adults? I am not, as the Minister might think, standing here asking for unlimited funding for all children’s hospices, despite the Government recognising that there is no upper limit on the money that could be available, but I am standing here asking for fairness. It is quite simply shameful that PCTs can decide who to talk to and who to fund, and yet pay no heed either to what the Government are asking them to do with taxpayers’ money, or to those taxpayers themselves. The Government have previously said that they cannot blanket fund all the costs of running children’s hospices. But, again, that is not what I am asking for. The cost of running all the services, using my example of Treetops, is around £4,000 a day, a figure that I believe is comparable across the country, and yet the cost of medical care for each child is just £240 a night. Is it really too much to ask the NHS to pay for medical care? Is not that part of its remit? In some parts of the country, PCTs are at least going some way towards meeting their obligations to the communities that they serve by providing up to 10 per cent. of running costs for some hospices. But I am looking for a directive from the Government to primary care trusts, not asking them to perhaps think about it and if they cannot be bothered even to reply to letters, not to worry, but ordering them to instigate a process whereby PCTs must passport the medical costs of children using hospices to the hospice in question. To return to Treetops, let us take the example of a wonderful little girl who was telling me recently all about her visit to see ““Disney on Ice””. If she chooses, with her parents, to go to a hospice for respite care, the cost of the medical element should be met by the PCT covering the area where she lives. It does not need to be complicated; it just needs to happen. Where is the NHS free at the point of need for our children? I urge the Government, through the Minister, first to widen the scope of additional palliative care funding to include children; secondly, to put in place a process that will force PCTs to engage properly with children’s hospices in accordance with the national service framework; and thirdly, to put in place a process that forces PCTs to commission properly children’s hospice services in a manner that passports the funding for medical care. Before I close, I again pay tribute to everybody within the children’s hospice movement and the caring public who support them.