Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will ask NHS England to publish the (a) work completed by, (b) current work programme of and (c) future topics that are due to be considered by the Clinical Reference Group on Vascular Disease.

It is for NHS England to determine what information it publishes in relation to the work of the Clinical Reference Groups (CRGs) and it has advised that the CRG work programmes will not be published. However, it has provided the following information on the work of the CRGs on interventional radiology and vascular disease respectively.

The CRG on interventional radiology has, in conjunction with the hepatobiliary and cancer programmes, produced clinical policy on selective interventional radiotherapy (SIRT), and the commissioning through evaluation programmeon SIRT to collect further evidence on effectiveness.This work is continuing.

The CRG’s current work programme is to support work across the medical and surgical CRGs where policy and service specifications include interventional radiological procedures.

The role of CRGs across specialised imaging, interventional radiology and Positron emission tomography–computed tomography is being reviewed. Once this is agreed, the work programme for 2016/17 will be developed.

NHS England has previously published a service specification and polices for vascular disease, which can be found at:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/spec-services/npc-crg/group-a/a04/

It has also developed quality metrics.

The CRG on vascular disease work programme for 2015/16 includes:

- reviewing policies in line with changing practice;

- revision of the service specification has been produced;

- assessing specialised providers against the key quality indicators within the service specification; and

- working with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence on technology appraisals relating to specialised vascular services.

NHS England is currently working with stakeholders to identify potential areas to be included within the 2016/17 work programme for the CRG on vascular disease.