It is a scandal that so many hospices have been left in serious financial difficulty - Andrew Vine

Thanks to the nurses, doctors and auxiliary staff alike, there was laughter as well as tears in those final days, fond remembrance of a long life lived well and fully, and above all a sense of calmness.

Countless othes in Yorkshire will have similar stories to tell, thankful for the first-rate care that ensured their loved ones died peacefully.

Across the county, our hospices are sources of pride as well as comfort, quietly and without fanfare doing an absolutely vital job. They are cherished and admired within their communities, which respond with enthusiasm and generosity to appeals for funding.

That makes it nothing less than a scandal that so many hospices are in serious financial difficulty because of inadequate government support and a clumsy policy decision that has sent their costs soaring.

Beds are being taken out of use and staff made redundant as hospices struggle, and shamefully, the result for at least some people is for their lives to end in pain on a trolley in a hospital corridor.

This cruel fate should not be happening in one of the wealthiest countries in the world in the 21st century, and it is a damning indictment of the neglect of an essential component of our health services. The plight of hospices – and by extension, that of people with terminal diagnoses – was set out last week by Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee in stark and frankly distressing detail.

The cross-party committee’s members criticised the government and NHS England for “not responding to the growing financial crisis in the adult hospice sector with the seriousness and urgency needed”. Of the 500,000 people who die in England each year, 42 per cent are in hospitals where many “do not want or need to be”, 28 per cent at home and only five per cent in hospices.

Hospice funding is not keeping pace with rising costs or the demands of an ageing population who need end-of-life care, and about six in 10 have either made cuts in their services already or will have to.

At a time when hospices are needed more than ever, they are able to do progressively less, the result of being starved of cash. They spend £1.2bn a year on providing care, yet receive only £420m, leaving them reliant on fundraising.

This has been a crisis a long time in the making. A decade ago, the senior financial officer of a hospice serving one of Yorkshire’s biggest cities told me the growing shortfall in funding kept her awake at night.

At that point, she needed to raise £5,000 every single day just to maintain services at their current level, a daunting task even then.

That sum made no provision for addressing ever-increasing demand for beds or care at home. She foresaw the time coming when the financial gap could no longer be bridged and care cut. Well, now that time has arrived, and the government needs to do something about it, and urgently.

Ministers should wake up to the fact that failing to provide hospices with the money they need is a false economy. They save the NHS £800m a year by caring for the terminally ill and free 1.5m hospital beds, according to the committee. If hospices cut services, it can only increase the pressure on hospitals.

We’re seeing the same problem in the government’s failure to tackle the crisis in social care. It is always the NHS that has to pick up the pieces for a refusal to integrate all the elements of the health and care systems and make them work for everybody.

And in the case of hospices, ordinary human compassion surely demands the Government acts to ensure the expertise and kindness of these charitable institutions should be available as widely as possible.

It comes as no surprise that one of the main difficulties for hospices is the government’s decision to increase national insurance contributions for employers, which has sent staff costs soaring, accounting for at least some of the cuts to care.

This short-sighted policy has caused problems for every employer in the country, but if it is contributing to people dying in pain, then action must be taken. The government should reverse the NI increase for hospices, to relieve at least some of the pressure on them while it finds ways to increase their funding. Anything less lets down these magnificent institutions and patients who need them.