Layla Moran
MP for Oxford West and Abingdon · Liberal Democrat · United Kingdom
“I pay tribute to all the Members who have shared their story; I feel we have learned a bit more today about how the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips) became how she is.”
“I genuinely do not believe that palliative care would have been included in the early batch of MSFs if it were not for this Bill forcing the Government to do so.”
“My constituent asks: “how many more need to take their own lives in horrific ways because they simply cannot bear the pain, discomfort and hopelessness any more?” She wants the right to decide for herself when enough is enough. Then there is the constituent whose sister went abroad to access assisted dying.”
“No, I shall not. It is worth noting that the NHS has not been meeting its own standards on palliative care for decades. The then Minister for Care, the right hon. Member for Aberafan Maesteg (Stephen Kinnock), appeared before our Committee in the spring, and he mentioned the importance of workforce.”
“We are lucky in Oxfordshire that we have some of the best palliative care in the country. He described how her care was exemplary—she died without pain and was well looked after—but he felt that her wishes were not respected while his father’s were, and there were consequences to her not being able to access assisted dying, as her brother…”
“Member for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn), who is a fellow member of the Health and Social Care Committee. Although we wrote the reports together, I have come to a different conclusion, with great respect. It is, frankly, a stain on successive Governments that palliative care is in this state.”
The complete record
Every one of 607 lines we hold for Layla Moran, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 1 of 13.
“Build E1, kill the prospect of Palestine. It is that simple, and that is not a conspiracy theory; it is Israel’s stated aim. We have a small window to affect what happens next because the Israeli elections are happening soon, as the Minister said. If we are going to make any difference to the ordinary Israeli politic about who they decide to elect, we need to act now and turn this on its head. He talks about the technicalities in banning trade with the illegal settlements. I have laid a Bill that makes it quite simple: prohibit it now, put the onus on the Israeli Government to sort it out, and if they change their policy, we will change ours.”
“I, too, thank Baroness Amos, her team and, most especially, the families who so bravely gave the evidence that has formed this report. Further to the conversation about accountability, the Secretary of State will have noticed that some families are concerned that the commissioner is just one person, and that there is too much for them to do. Can he make clear that the buck stops with him and, indeed, the PM, and that he will not let go of this? The commissioner will report every six months to the Health and Social Care Committee—we welcome that—and once a year to Parliament. Further to that, will he personally commit that the Secretary of State will seek permission from Mr Speaker to make a statement to the House once a year, so that they can be held personally accountable for the progress made too?”
“There is an agreement in the deal that the UK will increase support for life sciences and spending on new medicines from 0.3% of GDP to 0.6% of GDP by 2036. That is an increase of spending on medicines, particularly, from 10% to 12% of the NHS budget.”
“That is in part because of where the QALY is set; in fact, research has been done that suggests that we could have put the figure even lower. It is not a budget, and does not have to increase with inflation. Some have made that case, and I will come back to that point in a moment. The second part of my speech relates to changes to the rebate mechanism. There is a voluntary agreement between the British pharmaceutical industry companies, and the NHS caps the amount that it spends on branded medicines. If the NHS spends more, it claws back some of the money from those companies. Under the deal, the UK Government are limiting that to 15%, which is down from 22.9%. Let us put those two things together: we have the NHS paying more for medicines, and receiving less back through rebates.”
“The most important of those, which was raised by my whistleblower, is the changes to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence thresholds. We must remember that NICE was set up as an independent body of Government to make health economics assessments for treatment and medicines, to maximise value for money. I do not need to remind the Minister that providing value for money for the taxpayer is in the NHS constitution. The Government gave themselves powers to direct NICE on cost-effectiveness thresholds, raising them from £20,000 to £30,000 up to £25,000 to £35,000 for each quality-adjusted life year. In plain speech, that is basically the amount of money that we would spend on a medicine to increase people’s good life expectancy by one year. Historically, the NHS has had a very good deal on medicines.”
“I continue to believe that the NHS would be better off if ministers decide to scrap their original plan to spend more on new, less good value medicines, and used the money instead to provide basic things that we already know are good value, but don’t manage to provide adequately.” Let us start by explaining what this deal does. It is worth mentioning that it is not a free trade agreement. That is quite important, because we will not get the normal mechanisms of scrutiny. This is one of the only ways that we can scrutinise it. We certainly do not get a proper vote on it. Different Committees of this House have raised that as a key point, so I am delighted that we are able to discuss it. The deal agrees with the USA that there will be no tariffs on UK pharma exports until January 2029, and we have agreed a series of measures in return.”
“My request of the Department again, and much more publicly, is to sort this issue out. Other Departments do this much better, so there is no reason why we cannot. The information exists; it is a question of putting it correctly in a spreadsheet. Today, I hope that we will discuss the pharmaceutical deal. I have to admit that I had seen stuff about the deal, but it was not until a whistleblower came to my surgery that I really began to understand the implications of it. They said: “I am a doctor, a public health specialist, and a NICE employee. I am deeply concerned by the plan to change the NICE cost-effectiveness threshold.”
“I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate on the NHS estimates and, in particular, the impact of the UK-US pharmaceutical deal. Let me start by briefly talking about the estimates themselves. I am sure that every Member has a copy of them; I have one every year. Given that we spend £211 billion on the NHS, it is rather extraordinary that £201 billion of that is simply two lines in this document. Last year, I made a request of the Department of Health and Social Care, in the light of the deal, that we get not just a better breakdown of the costs of the deal, but, more importantly, the ability to scrutinise the estimates. The Treasury’s own guidance says that the information in the estimates should be “informative” to readers. We can all read it, but—goodness me!—it tells us absolutely nothing.”
“I believe that by the end of my speech, the hon. Gentleman and I will be in violent agreement, if we are not already. There is one more aspect of this, incidentally: the supply chains deal, which I understand is being crafted. We do not have time to go into that.”
“Although Trump probably wants to be President for much longer than he will be, his term will come to an end, but the effects of this deal will last much longer than the period of time he might be in office, and the amounts of money involved are eye-watering. I wish we had more information in the estimates, but everyone knows the pressure the NHS is under.”
“That is a really good point. I will come back to generics, which make up nine in 10 of the medicines that the NHS uses. There is also an issue of devolution here, which I am sure other Members will cover. At the moment it is very complex, and it is not at all clear how the deal will apply in Scotland and Northern Ireland in particular. We cannot divorce this deal from the geopolitics. It is only happening because Trump decided that he wanted to slap tariffs on every country in the world and on a number of different sectors. The reason why the US came after the NHS is that historically, we get an incredibly good deal, but we have to admit—this is why this debate is so important—that we are using the NHS and NICE in geopolitical negotiations to appease the current President of the United States.”
“We simply do not know, because the Government refuse to publish the impact assessment owing to commercial sensitivities. Normally at this stage, I have a series of questions, but today—and this not just in the interests of time—I have only one: where is the impact assessment, and if the Government will not release it, what are they hiding?”
“As has been mentioned, that is an eye-watering amount of money, in the same period that we need to be spending money on dentists, GPs, capital investment, attendance at A&E, prevention, the shift to community and the 10-year plan. When we should be seeing money delivered to the frontline, instead we are seeing money diverted to a small number of very large American-based pharmaceutical companies with no transparency, little debate and absolutely no vote in this House. It is the lack of scrutiny that I take issue with, and there are economists who point out that we could have an extra 330,000 excess deaths by 2036. The Minister is looking quizzically at me, but she has information that I do not. It could be that those economists are being alarmist, but maybe they are not.”
“That is where long-term value is created, and it is where the UK misses out compared with other countries. I point colleagues to Denmark, for example, which has had extraordinary success in its economy because it not only invests in R&D, but ensures that a proportion of the manufacturing happens in Denmark. That is what drives economic growth. I now turn to the key point, which is the money. We do not know how much this deal is going to cost. There are two suggested amounts: the Institute for Fiscal Studies puts the cost at £9 billion, but the House of Commons Library briefing points out that the 0.6% of GDP in the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast actually amounts to £14 billion.”
“Biomedical sciences are going to drive my local economy, so I absolutely want that to happen, but there are also some important criticisms of this deal. First, Medicines UK, which represents a large number of pharmaceutical companies based here in the UK, has real concerns. The life sciences sector plan has stalled, and Medicines UK points out that even though the companies it represents supply nine out of 10 medicines to the NHS, those companies are basically not recipients of what is good in this deal. Mark Samuels, its chief executive officer, has also pointed out that while there may be new investment in this country, particularly in R&D, if we want to create jobs and strengthen the economy, we must also address the inadequate support for the production of goods in the UK.”
“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and that lack of transparency is the nub of my speech today. There are some potential positives in the deal. At the 10 February sitting of the Business and Trade Committee, a representative of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry said that zero tariffs and commitments to the pharmaceutical market in the UK were “welcome” and had been “sought for some time”. The Government’s press release points out that patients will get access to innovative new medicines—who does not want that? Of course we all want that, especially those who have incurable cancers and so on, but there is a trade-off. We all want to bolster innovation in the UK. I have an interest—I am the MP for Oxford West and Abingdon. We are the other side of the Oxford-Cambridge growth arc.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his speech, because he is showing how important this debate is. A lot of this has not been flushed out. Medicines UK, which is responsible for a lot of the generics that he talks about, disagrees with him, but that is a conversation for another time. My question is specific: does he agree that the lack of transparency behind this deal, and the lack of an impact assessment, is a material issue and that we should ask the Government to release such information?”
“I am frustrated, because everything the Minister is saying is in the press release. Can she please answer the question? Will the Government release the impact assessment? If they will not, will they at least allow a Select Committee to see it confidentially?”
“I am also struck that in the Secretary of State’s answers—he is right to point to the national recommendations that are yet to come; our understanding is they are coming next week—he failed to mention whether there will be any pot of money to ensure that any recommendations that need double-running in order to happen quickly will have the necessary resources. Can he assure the House not only that will his taskforce seek to implement these recommendations, but that he will ensure that the money exists for staffing, training and buildings so that they are implemented as quickly as possible, so that we do not have to sit here crying on these Benches on behalf of our constituents any more?”
“I, too, pay tribute to those families who came forward with their stories, but also to the thousands, if not tens of thousands, of families across the country who are hearing these stories today and are triggered because it reminds them of their own, including in my area in Oxfordshire. What struck me most about the report was the section on leadership and culture, and how when midwives and members of staff raised the alarm, they did not have access to the board, and board members were not curious enough to ask the right questions.”
“I welcome the statement and this approach. I thank the MHRA for engaging with the Committee when we asked it specific questions about this. It told us that the role of the regulator is to ensure that participants in any clinical trial are kept safe and are exposed to medicine only if there is a reasonable expectation of a positive effect, and that is what was foremost in its mind. It also reassured us that if it had not felt 100% assured, it would have not allowed the trial to go forward. There was a lot of disquiet about the iterative process that the trial has gone through—that it was stopped, paused and then started again. Could the Secretary of State outline for the House how usual or unusual that is? What support can the NHS offer those families who might have hoped to be part of the trail but now find themselves excluded from it?”
“In recent months, 35,000 houses in West Oxford have had their water pressure cut by Thames Water, in some cases by as much as 50%. Veronica in Osney Island says that her upstairs shower is now nothing but a dribble, and is barely usable. This is not a service; it is a scam, and my constituents are having to foot the bill for it. Their bills were put up last year. Can the Secretary of State explain to them what we are waiting for? Why can we not just let this failed company fail, and start again?”
“The Health and Social Care Committee’s most recent report into healthy ageing highlights the unacceptable 20-year gap in healthy life expectancy between the most and least deprived areas of the country. It also points out that physical activity can be as effective, if not more effective, in treating the ailments of older life than pharmaceutical intervention. That is why we recommend that the Government target the least active groups to narrow that gap and embed activity into clinical practice. I welcome the Secretary of State to his place. We are yet to have our first conversation, so let us have our first meeting, in which we might discuss this issue and more, as well as how to embed tackling inequalities into the whole of the national health service.”
“Oxford is proud to have the highest proportion of trans and non-binary people of any area outside London, so it was with sadness that I received an email from a constituent, Jennie, who already accompanies their spouse, who is trans, to the toilet, because she is so worried for their safety. Last year, 3,800 hate crimes were reported against trans people, and the worry in the community is that things will only get worse, not better, as a result of this guidance. This weekend is Oxford Pride, and the Liberal Democrats and I will stand proudly with our trans and non-binary neighbours. My question to the Minister is simple: what if she is wrong? What if her assurance that this decision will protect trans and non-binary rights does not come to pass and the situation gets worse?”
“For example, the Government’s obesity moonshot focuses on weight-loss drugs, but ignores the obesogenic environment of advertising, ultra-processed foods and lifestyle pressures. It tackles the symptoms and not the cause. And too often, these pilots show promise but are then never scaled up. What a waste! Innovation should be a mindset, not a buzzword, and we should strengthen clause 6 of the Bill to ensure that the long term is embedded from the outset. The second theme, which has come up already, is patient voice. Our inquiry into severe mental illness laid bare a system where vulnerable people feel like pinballs in a machine.”
“I have heard at first hand how decisions have been snarled up as key people have left, and we must learn from previous reforms that the savings often do not materialise because many of the same people who leave first end up being rehired—a point made in the Committee hearing a couple of weeks ago by the chair of NHS England, Penny Dash. So, despite my initial enthusiasm, there is much that we need to chew over. In the six inquiries and 13 one-off sessions that our Committee has done so far, there are clear themes for change, and it is on those that I will judge the Bill. The first theme is innovation. Pilots and moonshots are good, but they should not replace evidence-based prevention and joined-up thinking.”
“Also, please do not forget social care.” We must remember that this merger, which could risk becoming a distraction from the plan, did not start with the Bill; it started with the announcement in March 2025, and the effects are already being felt in the NHS. This was not in the manifesto, so it came completely out of the blue, with many people waking up and discovering that their jobs were at risk only from reading the news. It has been brutal. As a result, the Institute for Government told the Health Committee in our hearing just before the recess that there has been a “large drop in morale”, which is unsurprising. There has been uncertainty, poor communication and disruption.”
“Healthy life expectancy has not just stalled; it has gone backwards. We are getting older and we are getting sicker—so, yes, we need to be bold. There is widespread recognition that the three shifts in the 10-year plan, to community, to prevention and to digital, are the right ones, and if achieved—and that is an “if”—they will be transformative, but along with the enthusiasm, which I share, there is a big dollop of scepticism. Twenty-five per cent of the public do not believe this plan will make any difference to them, and we must prove them wrong. My message to this Government is this: “Focus on the plan. It is the right plan, and achieving it will be an enormous challenge.”
“It is a pleasure—and slightly surreal—to follow the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), because he is very much an architect of the Bill, and I am sure that we would have had many questions for him about what he meant by parts of it. It was a pleasure to work with him when he was in the role, and I look forward to working with the new Secretary of State too. We all understand what is at stake here: far too many feel that the system is not working for them. The latest British attitudes survey showed that more than half of people in this country are dissatisfied with the NHS. That should give us all pause. When the abolition of NHS England was first announced, I welcomed its boldness because our population faces enormous challenges.”
“Above all, the Bill will be judged not by us, but by Chris and Freya-Rose, the very patients who deserve to be put at the heart of this legislation moving forward. Official Report , 8 June 2026; Vol. 787, c. 2WC. (Correction)”
“It is self-evidently the moral thing to do, but—here is something I think the Secretary of State will like—it is also the economically wise thing to do, because study after study shows that tackling inequalities is the key to unlocking productivity in the NHS. Simply put, helping those who need it the most helps us all. This Bill needs to do more than just “have regard” to inequality; I would urge the Government to make it its core mission. I end by simply saying what I started with: I will work constructively to help the Government make this the success that I hope they want it to be. I would urge them to think about the downsides, because there are some and they need sorting out.”
“On that, the Committee will be having hearings on the federated data platform and Palantir, which has already been mentioned today. The final theme that has emerged in our work is inequalities, so I am excited about the potential of clause 4. I am proud of the Liberal legacy that this NHS is built on. In his seminal report, Beveridge rightly pointed to want, disease, squalor, idleness and ignorance as the five giants that needed to be slayed on the road to recovery following world war two. Obviously, we have come a long way since then, but I would argue that it is time to define some new giants, and health inequality must be one.”
“Section 75 arrangements are a good start and should be strengthened, and there is a lot of promise in the neighbourhood health plans under clause 24. Our concern is over clause 21, because if local authority representation is removed from ICB boards, then social care is not present in those first conversations. That is critical and needs rethinking. The fourth theme is data. Recently in my surgery, I spoke to a woman called Freya-Rose, who described how repeatedly recounting traumatic experiences compounded her own suffering. The single patient record could be transformational for her and others who find recounting traumatic experiences difficult. We therefore welcome clause 47, but we must be careful about the risks, especially around sensitive data.”
“I do have concerns over Healthwatch; I have even more concerns over the role of the HSSIB. We cannot have it both ways: people cannot sit at desks near other people who are making decisions and at the same time be perceived as entirely independent. The perception of independence cannot be legislated for—the perception is everything, and that is my concern. Clause 15 talks about co-creation, but getting this point right is key to making the system work. There are many examples of where it has been done correctly, but all too often it is just a tick-box exercise. The third theme is financial flows and integration. Time and again, the Committee is in rooms with local authorities, social care and the voluntary sector all saying that they know how to do this for their local area and it is the system that gets in the way.”
“Making sure that our GP surgeries are revving on all cylinders is key to ensuring that people get the access to NHS treatment that they need. The Secretary of State will know of my campaign to get a new site for Summertown health centre—in fact, we have been trying to meet to talk about it for over 14 months—but we are now at a key moment. The council and the local practices are at a point where, if we do not get a decision in the next few weeks, we risk losing the opportunity. However, there is a block, which is the district valuer. It often asks for rents far below market value, so what is the Secretary of State doing across Government to make sure that the role of district valuers in ICBs is reassessed?”
“If we are to lead a change in culture in the NHS, we should all show how we would do it, and should urge board members and executives to do the same, in every hospital across the country.”
“This is clearly the wrong move again. It is really stark; we keep hearing from patients across the country about how much they want the NHS to improve, but this is another blow to them, and they may even wonder if it is safe to go into their local hospital during the strike period. I am grateful to the Secretary of State for coming to the Committee and talking about corridor care. The really interesting thing about that session was that the hospitals that have turned things around did so because of leadership from the top. Their executives and board members were going into hospitals out of hours and on weekends to speak with resident doctors, nurses and patients, to see what things were like on the ground. When was the last time the Secretary of State did that? This is not a “gotcha” moment—I have not done that recently, but I want to.”
“We owe it to the thousands of people facing their final days today, and to the families who will remember their care forever, to finally get it right this time.”
“If they knew what to do in that moment, they may decide not to call 999 and instead have better care where the patient is. That is clearly better for everyone involved and is far less distressing. Finally, I come to hospices. So many are recipients of fundraising from marathon runs and bake sales. It strikes the Committee as nonsensical that this important part of the sector is funded primarily through charity. We welcome the multi-year settlements made more recently and the money into capital, but we make the point that if hospices are to help lead the way out of this crisis, they need much better and more long-term support. The Government’s modern service framework must be more than just a press release. It must be a pledge to every citizen that when their time comes, they will be supported, not stranded.”
“We recommend that the Department reports progress on the 90% target annually, and we welcome the single patient record to drive integration, but we want to understand better how that data will be shared not just with the NHS, but across all partners involved in end-of-life care. We cannot deliver this change without our workforce—the people. Vacant posts in this area are mounting, and only 30 to 40 new consultants qualify each year. We await the 10-year workforce plan with bated breath, but we hope that it also includes specific measures to address children’s palliative care staffing. It is not just the specialists but the generalists who should get better training in this area. At the moment, too many nurses in the community might send a patient to acute care because they cannot adequately manage risk with confidence.”
“One clinician told us: “If there was more willingness to link data and allow ICBs to have a better view of it and work with partners”— hospices and the third sector— “they could better understand the need and actively address health inequalities.” Of the 1% of our population who die each year, only around half end up on the palliative care register, and that is despite financial incentives for GPs to put them there. The Government have a welcome stretch target of 90%, but they have also removed the financial incentives for GPs to maintain the registers. We are concerned that that will result in a decrease, not an increase, in those who are registered.”
“A further concern was the effects of the shift to the community. We worry that funding restraints and workforce and skill shortages will make that transition difficult. In the same breath as saying that they want this shift, the Government’s forthcoming NHS reorganisation Bill is proposing to remove local authority representation from ICBs. Local authorities are responsible for social care, and social care workers are the backbone of end-of-life care, with 22% of deaths occurring in care homes. If we want to strategically commission end-of-life and palliative care, it is nonsensical to remove local authority voices from the top table and that strategic role right from the off. We therefore urge the Government to reconsider their position. We also urge the Government to fix data sharing.”
“Let us take 24/7 advice lines, which could offer guidance, reassurance and support for care at home, potentially reducing A&E admissions. At present, just 43% of ICBs offer them properly. That is despite the fact that 24/7 telephone advice lines have been recommended as a minimum service requirement by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the Department for more than two decades. The role of pharmacies is also critical, but they too need support to deliver. The Minister has committed to 100% coverage of telephone lines by 2027, but we push him further: the MSF must mandate ICBs to deliver not just telephone lines, but access to all services, including symptomatic medication and in-person care. Unfortunately, death does not wait until 8 am on a Monday morning.”
“What is fundamentally different this time? There have been frameworks before, most notably the palliative and end-of-life ambitions framework and the NHS national standards for palliative and end-of-life care. This time, we need more than well-intentioned ambition; we need action, accountability and assurance. The Committee recommends that ICBs and the Department are held accountable, with clear consequences for failing to meet standards. We must ensure that ICBs have the support, tools and resources required to implement these high standards. We cannot allow this to be another framework that gathers dust on a shelf. The thing is, Madam Deputy Speaker, we are not meeting the guidance that already exists.”
“We found that many ICBs lack sufficient understanding of their local needs to commission effectively. Competing financial pressures mean that palliative care is so often pushed to the bottom of the pile, and the culture of understanding needs to come right from the top. Structural and geographic inequalities persist, and deprived and marginalised communities face significant unmet need. To fix that will require high standards and accountability across the country, which is why the forthcoming modern service framework is so important, and we welcome it. The Minister told the Committee that making palliative and end-of-life care one of the first five modern service frameworks was a “bat signal” to the system. We welcome that, if not the mental image of him as the caped crusader, but we approach the MSF with a healthy dose of scepticism.”
“We also need pan-integrated care board guidance on commissioning services for babies, children and young people. There are too few of these services, so we need to pool resourcing. The expert panel’s report also revealed a distressing and deep-seated postcode lottery for all in palliative care. A lived experience witness said: “I went there, and he was screaming—clearly dying, in absolute agony and very, very distressed. And it took for me to ring so many different people to get someone to actually listen to me say, ‘I don’t care if he had pain relief two hours ago, he needs some more now and he needs something different.’ He died early the next morning. I know this would not have happened in my local area—so that made it an even more distressing experience”. That heart-wrenching story—there are many others—is so common in these reports.”
“Our 22 conclusions and recommendations span six main areas: the modern service framework, commissioning, data, workforce, bereavement, and hospices. Nowhere is the failure of this sector more acute than in the care of babies, children and young people. The expert panel identified serious inadequacies for this vulnerable and under-served group. One clinician told us that children are “just an add on”, and another said: “There is a severe lack of 24/7 cover for community children’s nursing, and no investment into it either.” We are concerned that the Minister was unable to commit to providing clear and specific standards and guidance for babies, children and young people, and we strongly recommend that standards for that group and for the transition between child and adult services are made a priority.”
“We began by asking our independent expert panel to look at the heart of this system. The panel is made up of health and care experts from a range of disciplines—clinicians, lawyers and health economists, as well as temporary members with expertise in palliative care—and is ably led by Dr Jane Dacre. I am grateful for their work. Their report drew on available evidence, the Government’s own standards and the lived experience of patients, their families and professionals. The panel found a sector in critical condition: fragmented, failing and forgotten. Our report took those findings and combined them with the session where we quizzed the Minister for Care—I thank him for being in his place today—and his officials.”
“On behalf of the Health and Social Care Committee, it is a pleasure to present to the House our sixth report, which is on the subject of palliative care. This is the second report we are presenting to the House in as many weeks, because the Committee is in a hurry to play our part in fixing the NHS and social care, and especially to shine a light on those areas that feel more intractable and that historically get less attention. This is clearly true for the area of palliative and end-of-life care. We welcome the more recent renewed focus on the very sensitive issue of death—it will happen to us all, yet too often as a nation, we leave it far too late to talk about it. That is perhaps why, despite the fact that it will be a universal experience, death does not often receive the political attention it deserves.”
“I commend the right hon. Gentleman for his campaigning on this issue over many years. Together for Short Lives was indeed a contributor to the two reports. Its specific recommendation on babies, children and young people’s care was that we need better specialist pan-ICB commissioning that is modelled on other services. They are a tiny proportion of an already tiny population, and they are so often forgotten. As I mentioned in my speech, they are considered an add-on at the end of a commissioning process, but we need to start with them. They deserve so much more thought than they currently get.”