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 ensure Parkinson's patients are supported with speech and language therapy.

Speech and language therapy provision is commissioned locally by integrated care boards. NHS England has revised the national service specification for specialised neurology following extensive consultation with clinical and charity partners. The service specification, published in August 2025, includes guidance on both specialised and core neurology services. The specification includes an annex which provides greater clarity for neurology sub-specialties, including movement disorders, under which Parkinson’s disease would fall. The annex states that integrated care systems (ICSs) should have local access to a multi-disciplinary team within their region. This should include speech and language therapists, as well as other allied health professionals.

Additionally, the national specialised commissioning neurology transformation programme has developed guidance as part of an ICS toolkit, specifically to support the implementation of the service specification.

As of January 2025, there are over 7,700 full-time equivalent speech and language therapists employed in NHS trusts and other core organisations in England. This is an increase of over 300, or 4.7%, compared to the previous year, and over 1,400, or 23.6%, compared to five years ago.