At Marie Curie, we've known for a long time that people who are diagnosed with a terminal illness are unfortunately more likely to experience poverty. With the rising cost of living, we've all seen significant increases in our food and energy bills, but those at the end of life have been hit particularily hard.

Many face the additional costs of assistance with aspects of daily living such as transport and personal care, and will have to pay out of pocket for home adaptations or specialist equiptment. On top of this, people living with a terminal illness often have energy bills that are thousands of pounds higher than the average household's due to the added energy needed for symptom management.

People who die before reaching retirement age are at an even higher risk of dying in poverty, as they typically have to give up or reduce their paid work and rely instead on the benefit system. But unlike the State Pension, which has increased in real terms in recent years thanks to the "triple lock", working age benefits have been subject to a range of real-term cuts and freezes that have reduced their value considerably. Further cuts could mean that even more terminally ill people are left struggling to make ends meet at the end of their lives