The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Hospice and End of Life Care brings together MPs and Peers from across the political spectrum to campaign for high quality and accessible palliative and end of life care for all.
About the APPG
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The group’s purpose is to:
Raise awareness and promote the needs of adults and children living with terminal or life-limiting conditions, and their families and carers, in Parliament.
Promote person-centred, evidence-based policies to improve end of life care in all settings, including hospices, hospitals, care homes, and in people's own homes.
Hospice UK, Marie Curie and Sue Ryder provide the secretariat for this APPG. The cross-party parliamentarians leading the work of the APPG include:
The most recent Annual Activity Report can be found here.
Inquiry into financial security and terminal illness
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The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Hospice and End of Life Care is launching an inquiry looking into financial security for people with a terminal illness and at the end of life.
By financial security, we mean difficulty meeting regular and other necessary bills. We recognise that financial security is about the relationship between costs and income, not just income.
We are interested in responses from people with lived, professional, or policy experience in this area.
We are interested in how answers differ between groups, including between:
People of working age and people who have reached state pension age
People diagnosed with different types of terminal condition
Groups who share protected characteristics (such as disability, race, sex) under equality legislation and/or are from inclusion health groups (such as people experiencing homelessness)
People living in different parts of the UK (in particular, in Scotland, where there is a different policy context around disability benefits)
The call for evidence will be open for three months and close on Friday 20th June 2025. You can submit evidence by completing this form. We are also accepting video and voice note submissions.
We will use the evidence provided to inform a report published later this year, and might use quotes from this evidence in that report and related material like press releases or social media posts. If you would prefer your evidence to be treated anonymously, please make this clear in your submission.
If you would prefer to submit your thoughts in one of these formats, or in an alternative format (e.g. Word Document) please contact secretariat@appgforeolc.org to arrange this.
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Review into government funding for hospices
The APPG conducted an inquiry into the state of government funding for hospices.
The inquiry found that despite the introduction of a legal requirement for Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) to commission palliative and end of life care, ICB commissioning of hospice services is currently not fit for purpose. As a result, the services hospices provide for dying people and their families and the value they provide to the health system is at risk.
This report includes the inquiry’s key findings and recommendations to National Government, NHSE and local authorities to ensure hospices can contribute to a system where everyone who needs palliative and end of life care receives it.
The review found that the significant rise in deaths, including in people’s own homes, during the COVID-19 pandemic placed huge pressure on the health and care system and led to incidences of poor care. The sheer volume of death, alongside measures to reduce the spread of infection, resulted in extreme pressure on now exhausted health and care workers and unpaid carers.
The report makes recommendations to Government, NHS England, Integrated Care Boards, end of life care services and other actors in order to harness what the sector has learned over the past three years to improve palliative and end of life care for all.
