Asked by: Lord Markham (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking in the upcoming national cancer plan to identify and address regional disparities in the diagnosis and treatment of ovarian cancer.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
It is a priority for the Government to support the National Health Service to diagnose cancer, including ovarian cancer, as quickly as possible, to treat it faster, and to improve outcomes. This is supported by NHS England’s key ambition on cancer to meet the Faster Diagnosis Standard, which sets a target of 28 days from urgent referral by a general practitioner or screening programme to patients being told that they have cancer, or that cancer is ruled out.
Reducing inequity and variation in cancer care is a priority for the Government, as is increasing early cancer diagnosis, as both are key contributors to reducing cancer health inequalities. Early cancer diagnosis is also a specific priority within the NHS’s wider Core20Plus5 approach to reducing healthcare inequalities.
In addition, we have committed to delivering an extra 40,000 operations, scans, and appointments each week, during our first year in Government as the first step to ensuring early diagnosis and faster treatment.
The recently announced National Cancer Plan will have patients at its heart and will cover the entirety of the cancer pathway, from referral and diagnosis to treatment and aftercare. It will seek to improve every aspect of cancer care to improve the experience and outcomes for people with cancer. This will include improving levels of early diagnosis across England. Our goal is to reduce the number of lives lost to cancer over the next ten years, including to ovarian cancer.
Asked by: Lord Markham (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what consideration they have given to the future of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology as a stand-alone department.
Answered by Baroness Jones of Whitchurch - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
There are currently no plans to revisit DSIT as a stand-alone Department.