Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent assessment his Department has made of the (a) prevalence of additional health problems experienced by people with Parkinson's Disease due to delays in receiving Duodopa and (b) costs incurred by the NHS as a result of such delays; and if he will make a statement.

We have made no such assessment.

From April 2013, NHS England assumed responsibility for commissioning adult specialist neurosciences services, including the majority of services for patients with Parkinson's disease, with some being the responsibility of clinical commissioning groups.

NHS England has advised that it does not routinely fund Duodopa (co-careldopa) for the treatment of Parkinson's disease and is currently considering its clinical policy.

Clinicians can submit individual funding requests for this treatment on behalf of their patients as per NHS England's individual funding requests standard operating procedure, which is at:

www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/cp-04.pdf

This process is monitored against the standard operating procedure to ensure that referring clinicians are informed of outcomes in a timely manner.

Once the commissioning position relating to this service area is agreed and service access criteria published, NHS England has advised that the number of individual funding requests from clinicians may reduce.