Hansard

I thank Sue Webber for bringing the debate to the chamber, and I put on record my thanks to hospices across adult and children’s services for the vital palliative end-of-life care and bereavement support that they have provided to more than 20,000 Scots in the past year.

CHAS runs Robin house in Balloch, which is in my constituency. It truly is a place of joy for the children and their families who use its services. I have constituents who have been cared for by St Margaret of Scotland hospice in Clydebank, and I know of the fantastic work that Marie Curie and the Prince & Princess of Wales hospice undertake in Glasgow. There will be many more besides.

I debated whether to spend my four minutes waxing lyrical about the essential and excellent work that our hospices do across Scotland, but others have already done so. Consequently, eloquence is out the window and straight talking is the order of the day—the minister should expect nothing less.

Our hospices are struggling with rapidly rising costs. The round-table session that was held with the minister yesterday was an opportunity to address that, especially before the budget, but she failed to take that opportunity. Where was the commitment to a minimum of three-year funding in the funding framework? Where was the national monitoring and oversight? Where was the provision to match NHS pay awards and the need to ensure pay parity? All of that is entirely missing from the framework.

The minister has a leadership role to play, which I think she would acknowledge. Getting everyone together at the round-table session and carrying out partnership working and local collaboration are, of course, constructive. However, as Sue Webber said, opening the meeting by telling hospices that their call for remedial funding for the next three to five years to address the £16 million deficit that the sector is facing is unaffordable was, frankly, wholly unacceptable.

The Government has reallocated money that had been intended for its independence referendum, and I welcome that. However, it has a constitutional futures division that eats up £2 million a year in staffing costs. Over the next five years, that expenditure would come to £10 million, which is more than halfway to what is needed by hospices. Surely that would be a better use of that money.

The additional costs that I refer to arose in part because of the Scottish Government’s actions in giving a wage rise to nurses in the NHS. They deserve every penny, but so do nurses working in hospices. Unfortunately, if hospices cannot offer the same pay, their nurses will leave in order to get better pay. It is irresponsible of the Government to shrug its shoulders and say that there is nothing that it can do. Again, the issue is about leadership.

We know that, for every £1 of statutory funding that is invested in hospice care, there is a saving to the taxpayer of £6 for child hospice care and £4 for adult hospice care. However, that is possible only if hospices are sustainable and treated as equal partners, with more than a passing nod from the Government in recognition of the significant financial contribution that they make and the risk that they undertake.

With all due respect, the Scottish Government cannot afford to watch another area of the health and social care sector descend into crisis on its watch. It must be involved in workforce planning and action needs to be taken on remedial funding in the budget. There needs to be a clear funding framework.

I will make a final point, because I have been around so long that I remember things. In the “Strategic Framework for Action on Palliative and End of Life Care—2016-2021”, the then Cabinet Secretary for Health, Wellbeing and Sport, now the Deputy First Minister, said:

“This Strategic Framework outlines the areas where action needs to be taken to ensure that by 2021 everyone who needs palliative care will have access to it.”

That strategic framework has come and gone. The palliative care strategy was then promised in the programme for government in 2021 and was to be developed and published over one year. That timescale has also come and gone, and the strategy has not been delivered. Where is the commitment to hospices and palliative care? To be frank, we have yet to see it.