Parkinson’s Disease

Ashley Dalton Excerpts

Monday 17th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Ashley Dalton)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Paul Davies) for introducing the debate, as well as everyone who signed the petition for raising this important issue and the many hon. Members who contributed.

I acknowledge each one of the 18 Back-Bench speeches and numerous interventions, and particularly all the constituents and campaigners that hon. and right hon. Members mentioned. We also have a packed Public Gallery, which goes to show just how important this issue is. I will attempt to answer as many questions as possible. I am unlikely to answer all of them, but my officials have noted every question asked; anything that I do not cover in my speech will be covered in writing to the hon. Member involved.

Parkinson’s disease presents one of the most complex and growing challenges for our health and care system. Given an ageing population and the condition’s rising prevalence, Parkinson’s demands not only specialist clinical expertise, but co-ordinated social care, community support, and innovative approaches to treatment and management. The impact on those affected is profound, and addressing their needs requires a system that is integrated and responsive to both current pressures and future demands.

The Parky charter is a five-point manifesto created by the Movers and Shakers to tackle what are described as “systematic failings” in care. It calls on Government to deliver five commitments: speedy access to specialists, instant information for patients, a Parkinson’s passport to streamline support, comprehensive and co-ordinated care, and a renewed quest for a cure. The charter aims to ensure timely diagnosis, dignity and better quality of life for everyone affected by this fast-growing neurological condition. I had the pleasure of meeting some of the Movers and Shakers only a few weeks ago, along with Parkinson’s UK. I recognise the urgency of their calls. I shared with them my commitment to improving outcomes for people with Parkinson’s and their families.

I acknowledge the need to improve access to Parkinson’s specialists. Through the elective recovery plan, the aim is for 92% of patients to start consultant-led treatment within 18 weeks by March 2029, supported by millions of additional elective appointments across specialties, including neurology. Our recently published 10-year health plan for England sets out a vision for neighbourhood health services, bringing multidisciplinary teams closer to communities and ensuring that Parkinson’s expertise is embedded in care pathways. We will also publish a 10-year workforce plan, which will ensure that the NHS has the right people in the right places with the right skills for patients when they need them, including patients with Parkinson’s. Those measures, combined with digital consultations and integrated care models, aim to reduce waiting times, tackle workforce shortages and deliver timely, personalised care for people living with Parkinson’s.

As of August 2025, there are over 2,000 full-time equivalent doctors working in the speciality of neurology in NHS trusts and other core organisations in England. That is over 90—nearly 5%—more than in 2024. It includes over 1,000 full-time consultants, which is almost 50—over 5%—more than in 2024. We will soon publish a 10-year workforce plan to create a workforce ready to deliver a transformed service.

Sadly, Parkinson’s cannot currently be cured, but it can be managed effectively with the right interventions. That is why we have embedded Parkinson’s care with broader neurological strategies, including the neurology transformation programme and the RightCare progressive neurological conditions toolkit. Those initiatives aim to reduce variation in care, improve safety and deliver integrated services across the NHS. They set out what good treatment looks like and support integrated care systems to provide the right service at the right time.

We are also taking steps to ensure that people have better access to information. In the 10-year health plan, there is a strong emphasis on using technology and community-based services to provide joined-up care and practical advice closer to home. Initiatives such as Diagnosis Connect, partly inspired by Parkinson’s UK’s referral programme, will help newly diagnosed individuals to receive instant information and support from trusted sources. We are expanding access to digital health tools so that patients and carers can manage symptoms, access guidance and connect with specialist teams without delay.

Consistent and timely access to medicines is key to maintaining a good quality of life and good symptom control for people with Parkinson’s, as well as preventing the complications that could otherwise lead to unnecessary hospital admissions. A focus on time-critical medicines is a key priority for NHS England’s medicines safety improvement programme, which is seeking to reduce severe, avoidable harm associated with medicines. Work is currently under way involving 80 NHS trusts, with 48 of them receiving active support for innovation and improvement. Practical tools such as the RightCare toolkit and resources from Parkinson’s UK’s “Get It On Time” campaign are also helping staff and patients to plan for hospital stays and optimise medication schedules.

While we currently have no plans to offer automatic entitlement to benefits, reforms to the welfare system are intended to improve support for people with long-term conditions such as Parkinson’s. Proposals in our “Pathways to Work” Green Paper mark a significant step in that regard, by moving away from the one-size-fits-all approach, so that people receive the tailored help needed to live with dignity and independence, and to work if they are able to do so.

For those who cannot work, we will guarantee a strong safety net, so that those with the most severe lifelong health conditions have their incomes protected through an additional premium and are exempt from future reassessment. We have recently published our consultation response to the Green Paper recently, and we will set out detailed policy proposals in due course.

Any changes to personal independence payment eligibility will come after the Timms review—an ambitious and inclusive review that aims to ensure that we have a system that supports disabled people to achieve better health, higher living standards and greater independence, including through employment. To ensure that lived experience is at the heart of that work, the review will be co-produced with disabled people, the organisations that represent them and other experts.

There is currently no plan to review the medical exemption list of conditions. However, I assure all Members that I am acutely aware of the list, and that it has been added to only once since its inception in 1968, which was to add cancer in 2009. However, approximately 89% of prescription items are currently dispersed free of charge, and a wide range of exemptions from prescription charges exist, including free prescriptions for everyone under the age of 19—or 16 if they are in full-time employment—and over 60.

Innovative treatments are transforming the outlook for people with Parkinson’s disease. The NHS has recently rolled out—let me try to say it now—Produodopa. No, I did not do well on that, but it is helping patients with advanced Parkinson’s to achieve more stable symptom control and to improve quality of life. The technology uses a small, wearable pump to deliver medication under the skin, managing symptoms more steadily through the day and night than traditional oral tablets. The 10-year plan commits to make wearables standard in preventive, chronic and post-acute NHS treatment by 2035. We will provide devices for free in areas where need and deprivation are highest. Alongside such research, we are driving breakthroughs in cell and gene therapies, and large-scale trials testing multiple disease-modifying drugs.

Of course, future progress depends on research, which is why my Department invests more than £1.6 billion each year on research through its research delivery arm, the National Institute for Health and Care Research. In the financial year 2024-25, the NIHR has committed £6 million to Parkinson’s disease projects through its research programmes. In addition, last month, the world’s largest clinical trial for treatments to stop or slow the progression of Parkinson’s opened for recruitment. I encourage researchers to keep applying for funding through the NIHR. We would love to see more proposals.

We have set up the UK-wide Neuro Forum to work across the four nations. I will ask officials to explore a conversation specifically on Parkinson’s and how better to share practice across the four nations.

Once again, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley for opening the debate, and all Members who have contributed to the actions I have outlined. The reforms echo the priorities set out in the Parky charter. By aligning policy with the charter’s five key asks, we can build a health and care system that delivers dignity, certainty and hope for every person with Parkinson’s and their families.

Drug-related Deaths

Ashley Dalton Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Ashley Dalton)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) on securing this debate, and I thank all hon. Members from across the House for their wide-ranging interventions. They all raise a number of important points.

The continued rise in drug-related deaths is deeply concerning, and my Department is committed to tackling it. I hope hon. Members will recognise that my presence at the Dispatch Box confirms this Government’s public health approach to drug-related deaths. I continue to work with my colleagues in the Home Office and others to bring forward measures to improve in this space.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North mentioned, the latest Office for National Statistics figures show that more than 3,400 drug misuse deaths were registered in England in 2024, which is a continued increase on 2023 and over the past 12 years. In terms of the work across our four nations, I am proud to regularly attend the UK ministerial drug and alcohol forum, and I work closely with my counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, having recently met them just in September. I will continue to work with them in future.

Many drug deaths are preventable, and this Government are committed, through our health mission, to ensuring that people live longer, healthier lives. Through our safer streets mission, we are also determined to make our communities safer, more secure and free from the violence caused by the illicit drugs market. We know that many people struggling with a drug problem are already at the sharpest end of inequality, often with multiple and complex needs; there are strong links between drug use, prison, deprivation and homelessness. The Government’s work to tackle drug-related deaths and to fund and improve drug treatment and recovery services can therefore also contribute to reducing social inequalities.

We are committed to ensuring that anyone with a drug problem can access the help and support they need, and that they are provided with evidence-based, high-quality treatment. Treatment is protective, and is the safest place to be for anyone with a drug problem. In addition to the public health grant, in 2025-26 the Department of Health and Social Care is providing local authorities with an additional £310 million to improve the quality and capacity of drug and alcohol treatment and recovery services. As a result of increases in funding, there are now nearly 345,000 people in structured treatment in England, which I am pleased to say is the highest number on record.

However, patterns of drug use are always changing, and my Department remains alert to the need to tackle new threats. We recently launched a public awareness campaign informed by new patterns of drug use, focusing on the dangers presented by synthetic opioids, ketamine and THC vapes. That campaign includes online films and targets 16 to 24-year-olds, following a worrying rise in the number of young people being harmed by drugs. It highlights particular risks, including the potentially irreparable damage that ketamine can cause to the bladder; the danger of counterfeit medicines purchased online containing deadly synthetic opioids; and the risk from so-called THC vapes, which often contain dangerous synthetic cannabinoids such as spice rather than THC.

We are distributing resources to local public health teams, drug and alcohol treatment services, youth services, schools and universities, and we remain alert to the wider threat posed by synthetic opioids. We are working with other Government Departments to enhance surveillance and early warning, improving our ability to respond to this threat. We have established new data streams, including collecting information on deaths linked to nitazenes through laboratory testing and ambulance call-outs in which naloxone was administered. As a result, we have a much closer to real-time understanding of current levels of prevalence and harms.

In addition, we have provided data to local areas on factors related to drug and alcohol deaths, and we are developing a self-assessment toolkit that local areas can use to identify where to focus more on these issues and on interventions that are known to reduce the risk of drug-related deaths. The first quarterly report of data from those sources has now been published on the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System’s website, and a weekly report is released to local authorities.

We also know that many people struggling with drug addiction have multiple and complex physical health needs. Together, these issues can be mutually reinforcing, making treatment and support much more complex and often increasing people’s risk of overdose. We are developing plans to improve care pathways between drug treatment and services for physical healthcare needs, such as heart and lung disease, as recommended by Dame Carol Black; and intervening earlier and treating co-occurring physical health conditions to reduce drug-related deaths and improve outcomes.

We are also looking again at naloxone, the opioid reversal medication, which is a key pillar of the Government’s response to drug-related deaths. Last year, this Government made changes to legislation to enable more services and professionals across the UK to supply that medication without a prescription, making it easier for people at risk and their loved ones to access. We intend to consult soon on further steps to expand access to this lifesaving medication.

I once again thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North for securing this debate on such a critical issue. The Government are committed to reducing the harms that illicit drugs cause to both individuals and wider society. The Department of Health and Social Care will continue to champion a harm reduction and public health approach to drug-related harms. Many of these deaths are avoidable, and I am confident that the steps we are taking will put us in a stronger position to tackle this complex issue.

Question put and agreed to.