A Grimsby hospice is supporting a national campaign to ringfence banking fines to provide extra funding to the hospice sector.
Earlier this month, Brigg and Immingham MP Martin Vickers supported calls for cash raised through bank fines imposed by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to go to the country’s hospices. Organised by Box Power Community Interest Company’s Corin and Trica Dalby, the campaign calls for £150m to be allocated to the hospice sector within four months, followed by the first £100m of FCA fines each year being directed to hospices.
More than 40 MPs and peers have supported it, as have dozens of hospices. St Andrew’s Hospice in Grimsby is among the hospices supporting the campaign.
Its CEO, Michelle Rollinson, has explained why the Grimsby hospice is in favour of the call. “Corin Dalby, CEO of Box Power, is a longstanding supporter and advocate of the UK hospice sector, who has been running a campaign since July to have fines from the FCA earmarked to support hospices.”
“St Andrew’s Hospice is in support of this campaign and appreciates the assistance Corin is giving to the financial challenges hospices are facing.” Ms Rollinson emphasised that the campaign does not detract from the wider need for a fairer funding deal for hospices, calling the current system “demonstrably inequitable, unfair, and ad hoc.”
“What this campaign doesn’t do is take away the real need for the country’s hospices, like St Andrew’s, to have a fairer and fuller funding deal from the NHS. The current system structurally disadvantages both individual hospices and those people and their families needing palliative and end-of-life care.
“The current funding system is demonstrably inequitable, unfair, and ad hoc, and we are calling for the NHS to put end-of-life and palliative care on the same footing as other key health and social care services that they fully fund.”
Only approximately a third of hospice sector funding comes from the NHS, with the rest coming via donations, fundraising, and charity shops.
A Change.org petition for the bank fines funding to hospices has gathered almost 37,000 signatures: https://www.change.org/p/save-the-first-100-million-of-fca-bank-fines-for-hospices. Box Power CIC will deliver a letter calling for the change in person to 10 Downing Street at 3 pm on 10 December, along with a coalition of hospices and MPs.