Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he has taken to address regional inequalities in health outcomes for interstitial lung disease in the last year; and if he will make a statement.

In March 2014, NHS England published Putting Patients First: the NHS England business plan for 2014/15 – 2016/17 . This reaffirms its commitment to improving the quality of care, improving equality and reducing health inequalities, and that reducing mortality and improving outcomes outcome for people with respiratory disease remains a priority.

The commissioning of services for interstitial lung disease (ILD) is the responsibility of NHS England in its role as commissioner of specialist services. It has published a service specification for ILD which introduces a common standard for commissioning these services across England with the aim of ensuring equality of patient access to multi-disciplinary team diagnosis and current treatments.