Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, on what basis NHS England's Clinical Priorities Advisory Group has recommended that Duodopa should not be routinely commissioned by NHS England; what factors NHS England's Clinical Priorities Advisory Group took into consideration in reaching that recommendation; what advice NHS England's Clinical Priorities Advisory Group sought from patient representatives in reaching that decision; what process NHS England follows to allow interested parties to appeal recommendations by the Clinical Priorities Advisory Group; and if he will make a statement.

NHS England has advised that its Neuroscience Clinical Reference Group (CRG) carefully reviewed the clinical evidence for the treatment of advanced Parkinson’s disease with Duodopa (co-careldopa) and made a recommendation to the Clinical Priorities Advisory Group (CPAG).

CPAG accepted the CRG’s recommendation that Duodopa should not be routinely commissioned for treatment of this condition and, in turn, made this recommendation to the Directly Commissioned Services Committee of the NHS England Board. The Board committee endorsed the recommendation in June 2014.

Both patients and carers were involved in the decision-making process. There are four patient /carer representatives on the CRG, and patient and public stakeholders registered with the CRG were given an opportunity to feed in their views before the Group made its recommendations to CPAG. CPAG’s membership includes a lay chair and four patient representatives.

Further work has been undertaken on Duodopa since NHS England’s Board endorsed CPAG’s decision in June 2014 and NHS England will reconsider whether or not to commission this treatment, alongside a number of other specialised treatments, later this year.