Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to review regional differences in the (a) diagnosis, (b) treatment and (c) ongoing care for people with coeliac disease across NHS services in England.

Most services for long-term conditions, including for people with coeliac disease, are commissioned locally by integrated care boards (ICBs). It is the responsibility of ICBs, working with clinicians, service users, and patient groups, to develop local services and care pathways that meet patients’ needs. The Government expects ICBs to take account of relevant guidelines and best practice in designing their local services, and to ensure consistency of approaches between ICBs.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) publishes guidance on the diagnosis and treatment of conditions for use by healthcare professionals and commissioners in England. NICE guidelines are not mandatory and do not replace the judgement of clinicians in determining the most appropriate treatment for individual patients.

The NICE guideline, Coeliac disease: recognition, assessment and management, published in 2015 and reviewed in 2019, is available at the following link:

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng20

The NICE also publishes clinical knowledge summaries (CKS) as a source of information mainly for national Health Service staff working in primary care. A CKS on the clinical management of coeliac disease, which was last revised in May 2020, is available at the following link:

https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/coeliac-disease/

We have launched a 10-Year Health Plan to reform the NHS and improve care for people, including those with long-term conditions like coeliac disease. A central and core part of the 10-Year Health Plan will be our workforce and how we ensure we provide the staff, technology, and infrastructure the NHS needs to make it more accessible, proactive, and tailored for patients wherever they live in England.