Speeches by Kinnock.

“There was a report on bereavement in 2022 called “Bereavement is everyone’s business”. After that, the Department established a cross-Government bereavement working group to ensure better collaborative working across Government Departments. The question is the extent to which that working group is effectively improving…”

“That is what the 10-year plan is about. It is about creating a neighbourhood health framework and strategy.”

“Can I ask Dr Mitchell to add anything extra on the advance care planning question, because I think there may be more to say on that?”

“I do not want to make too much of a political point here. The reality is that when we came into office in July 2024, I looked across every aspect of my portfolio—general practice, pharmacy, dentistry, palliative and end-of-life care, adult social care—and, frankly, it was a pretty chaotic disaster across every aspect o…”

“I think there are two issues. One is that we do not have enough people on advance care plans. That comes back to the identification point: 345,000 people are on the palliative care register; we want there to be more. You are not going to get an advance care plan until you are on the register, so the first step is to ge…”

“We recognise that that voice needs to be heard. Obviously, local authorities play a crucial role in that. We have to ensure that local authorities are around the table as we develop this modern service framework. We also want to look at ways in which care workers can be more empowered. We are looking at delegation to e…”

“Absolutely. I am very happy to do that—with pleasure.”

“We have the “Universal Principles for Advance Care Planning”, published in 2022, which focus on the importance of providing opportunities for a person and their family or carers to engage in meaningful discussions, led by the person concerned, that consider the person’s priorities and preferences, including place of ca…”

“We have to make that work.”

“I get regular updates from officials, and I am pretty sure they will wheel me in at some point, but not yet.”

“I don’t, no. It is officials and stakeholders—”

“Yes.”

“It is absolutely clear that there is unwarranted variation—it is patchy. There are pockets of really good practice, but certain socioeconomic groups and geographical areas of the country are underserved. We absolutely acknowledge that. Part of this is to do with the integrated care boards, which have a statutory duty t…”

“I don’t want to pre-empt it. It is so important that we co-produce it with the stakeholder group. Five meetings have already taken place. I think there will be an answer to that question when we do the—”

“A big part of it is because of the stakeholder engagement that we have got through it. There will be an entire system to come behind it. It is not just something that we are developing in isolation. The other thing is that we have identified that there is too much fragmentation, with each ICB going off and doing its ow…”

“Absolutely. That is what the modern service framework will be about—and our approach to strategic commissioning, because strategic commissioning will not work unless you are using the data properly. It is a population health management approach, and you cannot develop a strategy unless you really have that data. On dat…”

“I think it is because it is part of a systemic shift, which is set out in the 10-year plan. The MSF will not exist in isolation from all the other change that we want to deliver. That is articulated in the 10-year plan, and that makes it very clear to the entire system. I do think that the entire system has understood …”

“On the children’s hospices side, that was revenue funding, so that is for staffing. But on the adult side, our view is that when you look at the ledger for any hospice, and the income and expenditure it has, if you can help with expenditure on the capital side—those projects about fixing the roof that have never happen…”

“The palliative care dashboard. I would be very happy to share more information about the dashboard with the Committee. I might ask Dr Mitchell to talk a bit about that, as she is very much leading on the clinical side. The dashboard is a powerful tool because it provides an ICB-by-ICB breakdown; looks at how many peopl…”

“Yes, absolutely. If you look down the list of stakeholders that we are engaging with for the modern service framework, we have people like the Social Care Institute of Excellence, Skills for Care, the National Care Association and the Care Association Alliance, so we have a whole range of key players.”