The Coalition of End of Life Charities responds to the Chancellor's statement on health and social care at the Comprehensive Spending Review

Following today’s Comprehensive Spending Review from the Chancellor, George Osborne, the Coalition of End of Life Charities has responded to his statement on health and social care.

A joint statement from the Coalition of End of Life Charities said:

“As a coalition of charities committed to improving end of life care, we asked the Chancellor to commit to fully funding improvements in end of life care ahead of the spending review. We did not get this pledge today and that is a missed chance. We hope for a substantial commitment from the government to improve choice for people at the end of life. Urgent investment is needed now to deliver higher quality services and more choice for people at the end of their lives. Trying to implement change without adequate funds would damage rather than improve care for people at the end of their lives. Doing nothing will also lead to increased spending rather than savings’.

“The absence of choice at the end of life is an issue that will not go away; too many people at the end of life can’t access support to die in their preferred place. Three million people will die over the course of this Parliament. Millions more will be bereaved. Yet we still see significant variations in the quality of care that people experience.

“The Minister for Care Quality Ben Gummer has a keen sense of the unacceptable variation, in his words ‘excellence is a long, long way from universal.’ We are pleased that the Minister has acknowledged that this issue needs to be fixed, and look forward to the Government addressing this urgent problem by fully funding the recommendations of the choice review.”