News Release

4th November

FUNDING FOR HOSPICE

Following a visit to the St Giles Hospice on Friday (1st November) and a meeting with Dr Robert Horton (the Chairman) and Peter Holliday (Hospice Director), Michael Fabricant is calling on the government to provide additional funding to support the growth of charity hospices - and to improve the time it takes for that funding to be allocated. The call comes following the MP's latest visit to Lichfield-based St Giles Hospice, which provides care for people from the city and across the region living with cancer and other serious illness.

Government funding currently only accounts for around one third of the £3.75m pounds it costs to run St Giles Hospice each year. While this amount is set to increase slightly following last week's announcement of an extra £10m for hospices across the UK, St Giles continues to rely heavily on the generosity of local people. In addition, the current trial of St Giles' new 'Hospice at Home' service - which provides specialist care allowing patients to die in familiar surroundings at home rather than in hospital - is being funded entirely by the hospice. State funding for new initiatives of this kind usually only follows after charities have invested in developing the service. Many in the hospice movement feel that the combination of limited levels of government funding, and the time lag in securing support for new services, is discouraging hospices from expanding the care they provide.

Michael Fabricant says: "Once again, St Giles Hospice is leading the way with a visionary new service. But rather than that vision being rewarded by the government, the hospice is having to meet the entire cost from its own resources. I'll be asking the Health Secretary Alan Milburn to review both the level of support the state provides for hospices, and the way in which new projects are supported, to encourage hospices like St Giles to continue to develop the very important work they do.

"The staff and volunteers at St Giles continue to do a wonderful job, and it was tremendous to see the recent enhancements to the hospice for the benefit of local patients."

St Giles Hospice Director Peter Holliday adds: "While we welcome the recent announcement of £10m of extra government funding for hospices like St Giles, if this is divided equally between hospices across the UK then it will only provide roughly what it costs to run St Giles for one week.

"Hospice at Home is just one of the many exciting ways in which we would look to extend our services if funding were available. But even running this service across our catchment area would cost around a quarter of a million pounds, and it's difficult to get any confirmation of government funding until we have actually committed to spending that."