Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that patients referred for a potential diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease are seen by a neurologist within 18 weeks.

The Government is committed to delivering the National Health Service constitutional standard for 92% of patients to wait no longer than 18 weeks from Referral to Treatment by March 2029, a standard which has not been met consistently since September 2015. This includes patients waiting for elective treatment on neurological pathways.

We have taken our first step towards delivering this commitment goal by exceeding our pledge to deliver an extra two million operations, scans, and appointments in our first year in office, having now delivered over three million more appointments.

The Elective Reform Plan, published in January 2025, sets out the specific productivity and reform efforts needed to return to the constitutional standard.

The Getting It Right First Time programme, which provides tailored regional and national support to providers, also has a neurology specific Further Faster workstream. This is a clinically led initiative supporting peer to peer learning and improvement. A neurology 'handbook' and checklist with benchmarked data and case studies has been published and there are regular neurology online sessions for clinical and operational leads.