The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dr Caroline Johnson)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) on securing this debate. He will appreciate that I am standing in for my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), who has been promoted to the Cabinet and the Home Office, so I ask him to forgive me if I do not have the answers to all of his questions, but I will ask the Department to write to him with those.
I know that this is an important subject for my hon. Friend and that he works tirelessly for the people of Stockton South on healthcare and on other matters. The waiting time for a diagnosis or an all-clear can be a very anxious one. It is something with which all of us who have been on a waiting list, or who have had a family member, a friend or a loved one on a waiting list, will be familiar. It is right that we do all we can to support services to recover from the pressures of the pandemic and to innovate and improve so that patients can have tests and receive diagnoses in a quicker and more convenient way.
Today, I will outline the work being done through the elective recovery programme to improve access to diagnostics and how that will impact patients across the UK, including in Stockton South. The waiting list for diagnostic tests in England currently stands at more than 1.5 million patients. Some 30% of those patients are waiting more than six weeks. That is up from a little under 1 million in 2019, before the pandemic. In the north-east and Yorkshire region, the waiting list for diagnostic tests is more than 213,000 patients, 26% of whom have been waiting more than six weeks. Community diagnostic centres are part of the answer and are a fantastic example of how we are providing more efficient, easier and more convenient access to vital services in the community.
The Government have committed £2.3 billion in capital spend as part of the 2021 spending review to support diagnostic services to recover and improve and to ensure that patients have access to often life-saving diagnostic tests that they need. This includes money to allow the NHS to continue to roll out a community diagnostic centre programme across England. This is a new way of delivering care, and it will ensure that elective diagnostic services are resilient in the face of winter pressures, because they have ring-fenced elective diagnostic activity.
Local healthcare systems, including NHS trusts, integrated commissioning boards, and local authorities, which know their patients and communities best, are being empowered to plan and bid for funding for new CDC sites, ensuring that they are placed where there is the greatest community need and the most clinical value, with successful bids ultimately signed off by the Secretary for Health and Social Care. I am pleased to say that 89 CDCs are currently operational across the country in a variety of sites, including hospitals, football stadiums and shopping centres, ensuring that patients have access to the care they need where they live. Those centres and hard-working NHS staff have so far delivered more than 2 million tests and are well on their way to providing capacity for 9 million tests a year by 2025.
With regard to the provision of a community diagnostic centre in Stockton, I am pleased to be able to inform my hon. Friend that the business case for the centre is currently in development. He will be pleased to learn that a large-model CDC, including capacity for imaging, physiological measurements, pathology and endoscopy, is planned for construction on the Castlegate shopping centre site, with plans for the centre to be fully operational by March 2025.
Castlegate is an ideal site for a CDC because of its accessibility for different population groups experiencing health inequalities, with excellent transport links. It is exactly the sort of area where the new centres can have the biggest impact. The Castlegate CDC will add to the 12 existing CDCs in the north-east and Yorkshire region and the four hub and spoke sites in the Tees Valley area, which have delivered more than 200,000 tests for patients in the north-east and Yorkshire region. Ten further sites across the north-east and Yorkshire are due to be approved in the near future and will all be operational by March 2025 to support our target of up to 160 CDCs.
I heard the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French), but I am afraid I do not have the answers for him today. I will ask the Department to write to him with information on his specific bid.
Alex Cunningham
This is music to my ears. We have all worked very hard for this—local authority, health authority and politicians—and I am grateful for the positive message the Minister is giving us. Now I am going to be even cheekier and say that we desperately need a new general hospital to serve Stockton and the wider Hartlepool area. We need new facilities there. I hope, 12 or 13 years after the original hospital was cancelled, that this Minister will be the one to deliver it.
Dr Johnson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. The building new hospitals programme is in process and bids are in play, so I am afraid I cannot comment any further, as he will appreciate.
In conclusion, I encourage my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South to continue his productive conversations with both his local ICB and NHS England to ensure that new developments in Stockton continue to support the local community health needs. I will ensure he is made aware when the proposal for the new centre has progressed further and when he can expect to see it open in his constituency.
I look forward to continuing to work with NHS England, local NHS systems such as the North East and North Cumbria ICS and fellow Members of the House to ensure that as a Government we meet the challenge posed by diagnostic waiting lists and ensure that patients are able to receive the often life-saving diagnostic tests that they need, as quickly and conveniently as possible.
Question put and agreed to.