Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent assessment he has made of the potential merits of making selective dorsal rhizotomy surgery available on the NHS for young people with cerebral palsy.

NHS England currently has in place a programme called Commissioning through Evaluation (CtE). This is designed to enable a limited number of patients to access treatments that are not funded by the National Health Service, but nonetheless show significant promise for the future, while new clinical and patient experience data are collected within a formal evaluation programme. The benefits of Selective Dorsal Rhizotomy (SDR) procedures are currently being assessed through this scheme.

The SDR CtE is supported in five designated hospital trusts across the country. There are two main phases for any treatments entered into NHS England's CtE programme. The first phase of the SDR CtE concluded in March 2016. During this phase a predetermined number of patients were recruited within a few selected centres across England and a formal evaluation programme was established.

The second phase - the analysis phase - has now commenced. Once the CtE evaluation report is available, NHS England’s published policy for access to SDR will be reviewed. NHS England expects to receive an evaluation report in March 2017.