Metastatic and Secondary Breast Cancer

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

Monday 19th June 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of level of compliance of NHS Trusts in submitting data on metastatic and secondary breast cancer to the National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service as mandated from 1 January 2013.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My Lords, the cancer outcomes and services dataset is collected by the National Disease Registration Service. It captures data about the patient at the time they are diagnosed for each tumour. Compliance with the data standard is improving, as reflected in the increasing number of instances of disease progression and recurrence submitted to the dataset. The National Disease Registration Service continues to support all trusts to improve the quality and completeness of their data submissions.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer, but I will probe a little further. A clinical audit for metastatic secondary breast cancer was commissioned by NHS England in May 2021. What is the progress of this clinical audit? Given the compelling importance of working across the jurisdictions of the UK, what is the incidence of metastatic and secondary breast cancer data held by cancer registries in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, notwithstanding devolution responsibilities?

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, and I pay tribute to her long-standing work on this subject. Data is very important, as it allows us to look at best practice in the various areas of the United Kingdom and how we can learn from that. It is all about the quality of data.

The Royal College of Surgeons began scoping for the audit commissioned by NHS England in October 2022. Key stakeholders will be consulted over the scoping period to determine the audit’s quality improvement goals. The scoping period concludes in September 2023 and a state of the nation report will be published in September 2024.

The noble Baroness will welcome that Cancer Focus Northern Ireland announced a £60,000 commitment to fund a two-year research audit into secondary breast cancer in Northern Ireland in February 2023. We look forward to the findings of this audit to see where we can improve our services here in England.