Sir Andrew Mitchell

Thank you for calling me, Ms Lewell, and many congratulations to the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Paul Davies) on securing the debate. As many Members have already said, a huge number of families have acquaintance with Parkinson’s. My old dad, who served in this House until 1997, lived with Parkinson’s and I am hugely honoured to be the patron of the Royal Sutton Coldfield and North Birmingham Parkinson’s Group, which does so much good and hard work in the royal town and elsewhere. I pay special credit to Movers and Shakers, which is led by people living with Parkinson’s. Some of them are in the Public Gallery today. Movers and Shakers was started by Rory Cellan-Jones and Sir Nicholas Mostyn. The “Movers and Shakers” podcast has made a huge difference to so many people, and I am extremely grateful to Sir Nicholas for agreeing to come to Royal Sutton Coldfield next April. There are just two key points that I want to emphasise today. The first is that we need more specialists and better access to specialists. We do not have enough neurologists in this country. People are supposed to have to wait for only 18 weeks to see a neurologist, but there is clear evidence of people waiting for between one and two years to see one, and of course most of those people will not have any medication in that period. There are 720 neurologists in the UK. There are 4,400 neurologists in Poland, which has half the UK’s population. The second point is that we need more support for research. Inevitably, that is about funding. We need to harness the private and public sector together to maximise that funding. These two points seem to me to be two of the five key points that we are discussing in this debate.