Thank you for getting in touch to rightly raise the very real concerns about the funding pressures facing hospices across Scotland.
Let me say at the outset that Scottish Labour agrees that the Scottish Government should be using the additional funding in health consequentials from the UK Labour Government to plug the funding gap facing hospice care providers and to ensure that hospice staff receive pay parity with the colleagues in the NHS.
Hospices play a vital role in our communities by caring for our loved ones and providing first-class specialist palliative care, which otherwise would need to be met by an already stretched NHS.
As you might be aware, my colleague Jackie Baillie MSP, Scottish Labour’s Deputy Leader and Health and Social Care Spokesperson, has been unequivocal in her support for the hospice sector, including visiting CHAS many times. She has previously asked the First Minister in the chamber to support hospices with the additional funding and will continue to do so until the Scottish Government does the right thing.
The Scottish Government has no excuse for not helping hospices. As part of Labour’s transformative budget last month, the Scottish Government will receive an additional £789 million of health-related consequentials this year and £1.72 billion for our NHS next year. It is time for the First Minister to use this funding to fix the crisis in our health and social care services – and that most definitely includes supporting hospices.