Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help improve outcomes for people living with migraine.

The Government recognises the significant impact that migraine can have on individuals’ quality of life and is committed to improving care and outcomes for people living with this condition.

NHS England is supporting improvements in migraine care through national programmes such as the RightCare headache and migraine toolkit and the Getting It Right First Time neurology programme. These initiatives support earlier diagnosis, more effective management in primary care, and better access to specialist services where needed, helping to reduce unwarranted variation in care and improve patient outcomes.

To support consistent, high-quality care, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has published clear, evidence-based guidance on the diagnosis and management of headaches, including migraine. This guidance helps clinicians to diagnose migraine more promptly and provide appropriate acute and preventive treatments based on individual clinical need.

In August 2025, NHS England updated its service specification for specialised adult neurology services. It outlines a number of minimum service requirements for key specialties, including complex headache services.

Over the last five years, a new class of drugs, calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) inhibitors, has been made available on the National Health Service for the prevention and treatment of episodic and chronic migraines. Atogepant is the latest CGRP inhibitor to be recommended by NICE for use as a prevention and acute treatment of migraine.