Speeches by Kinnock.

“Every ICB is held to account by NHS England every year. They have to produce—”

“There is a statutory duty for trusts and ICBs to deliver the best possible care to their populations. They need to ensure that they are discharging their functions on the basis of their statutory duties.”

“Yes, it is absolutely a priority for me to enable the shifts in our 10-year plan. If we are going to operationalise the 10-year plan, resources are a really important part of that, but it is also about reforming the system. Through better integration and better use of technology, you can be more productive without nece…”

“Well, NHS England and DHSC will become a new body corporate that does the same thing. It will be the same function, so every ICB is held to account on that basis. The last outturn on that was January 2025. The ICBs have to show that they are discharging their functions. It is our job to hold them to account, and it is …”

“Well, as Ed says, we are publishing our workforce plan in the spring, and that will set out our targets right across the board. That is why I don’t know the answer to that question yet, but it is important that we have strong specialist care capability. From the point of view of the generalist workforce, it is quite di…”

“Yes. When we talk about strategic commissioning, the funding flows have to follow the priorities set out under the new approach to commissioning. If you are saying that we are now going to have a holistic view where trust, primary care, adult social care and community care voices are sitting round the table and plannin…”

“I don’t know the answer to that question.”

“No, but there has been about an 80% increase in the number of specialist palliative care doctors since 2010 and about a 5% increase since 2024, so there is some increase in the specialist workforce. I absolutely accept that it is not where we would like it to be, but it has been moving in the right direction.”

“In specialist doctors?”

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

“There are two sides to the workforce in palliative and end-of-life care: the specialist side and the generalist side. On the specialist side, we have actually seen quite a significant increase in the number of specialist doctors. I believe we have 910 specialist palliative and end-of-life care doctors now, which is an …”

“Thank you for that question. I think this pivots back to what I was discussing with the Chair earlier, which is that we have to make this happen because, otherwise, we are just going to see a prolongation of the status quo. The question is how to make it happen in a way that still enables the stability and sustainabili…”

“We have to make that work.”

“Yes.”

“Yes. I think you are right that, as a country, we do not talk about death enough. For all sorts of perfectly understandable reasons, it has a certain stigma around it, and people do not talk about it enough. I think there are two sides to the coin: one is the system and the workforce, and the other is the public. It is…”

“I think once every two months I meet the head of ADASS and the head of the LGA jointly, and BCF always comes up. There is good practice. I recently visited a hospital in Bradford where they had a delayed discharge team made up of a combination of hospital staff and local authority staff sitting in the same office in th…”

“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…”

“I am very happy to do that. We are looking at reforming the Better Care Fund, which plays an absolutely crucial role in bringing local authorities together with the health system to improve delayed discharge, which is a massive challenge that the system is facing. I have been working on that with my officials, and with…”

“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?”

“We have to do it, and the point is that we are currently living in a world where the problem the system is facing, and one of the reasons we have such a huge elective backlog, is because we haven’t made primary and community care work as effectively as they should. We have to prevent avoidable admissions. Far too many …”