I thank the hon. Members for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) and for Darlington (Peter Gibson) for securing this important debate.

Hospices do incredible work. In communities across the country, they hundreds of thousands of people every year with essential palliative and end of life care. The services that hospices deliver are absolutely crucial to improving the quality of life for people in their final weeks and days, helping to provide a dignified, comfortable and compassionate end of life. That support is vital not just to people at the end of their lives, but to their family and friends. End of life care impacts not just the patient but all their loved ones, and the specialist support that hospices provide patients in their final stages of life, and their families who are watching them pass away without suffering or pain, is immeasurable. It is why hospices are so important.

In my Enfield, Southgate constituency, we are lucky to have a facility of the incredible North London Hospice, which has been caring for people since 1984. Its health and wellbeing centre in Barrowell Green helps to enable the best of life at the end of life for people across the boroughs of Enfield, Haringey and Barnet, providing tailored care, including physical, emotional, spiritual, wellbeing and bereavement support for patients, friends, carers and loved ones. I must also mention those in the wonderful North London Hospice photography club, who support each other and take amazing pictures, which they sell to raise funds for the hospice.

I remember hearing from a constituent of mine, Joy Watkins, who was receiving care and support at the hospice. Joy has sadly now passed away, but her words about the importance of the hospice and the care that she received were incredibly moving. Joy spoke about going to something called a death café—an informal space for people to talk about end of life, share their concerns and listen of others express their thoughts, hopes and experiences of death. She said that going to the death café enabled her to make choices about the end of her life. She could make choices about who to spend time with and about the finances that she would make use of at the end of her life. It transformed the way in which she viewed and handled the end of her life.

The way in which we talk about and approach dying matters, and Joy’s words have really stuck with me. Indeed, they were one of the reasons I introduced my private Member’s Bill—the Terminal Illness (Provision of Palliative Care and Support for Carers) Bill—back in 2018. Next month, Hospice UK will be promoting its campaign for Dying Matters Awareness Week, and I look forward to supporting its efforts on that important initiative. Honest and timely conversations about death and dying are essential to good end of life care, but barriers including lack of confidence, taboos around discussing death, and confusion about who should be having these conversations all too often mean that patients, carers and families may not understand what is happening or get all the information and support that they need. That is where hospices and their brilliant staff come in. More recently, a close family member of mine received support from North London Hospice, and although Gabby sadly passed away, I am so grateful for the hospice’s specialist care.

Yesterday I and about a dozen hon. Members ran the London marathon. I was proud to do so to raise money for North London Hospice. When pounding the streets of London in such a wonderful festival of community yesterday, I was struck by how many runners were, like me, raising money for their local hospices. That demonstrates the sad reality of inadequate central funding for hospices. I have been trying to bang the drum for North London Hospice since I was first elected, and although it took me a few years to muster the courage to put on the running vest and put my knees on the line, as each year passes it feels as if the challenges facing hospices grow greater and more acute.

As we know, hospices are an integral part of our health and social care system. They work in partnership with local health and care systems, helping to reduce the pressure on our NHS by caring for patients who would otherwise be directly supported by NHS services. As a community, we are reliant on hospices—they are important parts of the communities that they serve—but they are also reliant on us for support, through fundraising and donations, because they are largely charitably funded. On average, around two thirds of adult hospice income is raised through fundraising such as charity shops and marathons, and the figure is higher for children’s hospices, which must raise around four fifths of their income.