Asked by: Chloe Smith (Conservative - Norwich North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has plans to deliver a national awareness campaign on breast cancer screening.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
The Department is currently exploring opportunities for national campaigns to support positive outcomes on women’s health. Work is underway to scope the feasibility of running a national campaign to support breast screening uptake, and this will be informed by pilot activity due to run in London in 2024/25.
Asked by: Chloe Smith (Conservative - Norwich North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress has been made on the Government's major conditions strategy with specific reference to breast cancer; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
In the development of the Major Conditions Strategy, we are considering how we improve outcomes for people in this country living with multiple conditions. Aligning work across several groups of conditions including cancer for this strategy, will allow us to focus on where there are similarities in approach and ensure care is better centred around the patient, maximising existing resources both within patient pathways and in integrating between pathways.
Improving early diagnosis of cancer, including breast cancer, is a priority for the Government. The National Health Service has an ambition to diagnose 75% of cancers at stage 1 or 2 by 2028, which will help tens of thousands of people live for longer. We know that breast cancer remains the most common cancer in England, with over 49,000 people being diagnosed each year. Thanks to advances in screening, treatment, and care, alongside NHS awareness campaigns, more women are surviving the disease than ever before.
The NHS Cancer Programme has also commissioned five new cancer clinical audits, including primary and metastatic breast cancers. These will provide timely evidence for cancer service providers of where patterns of care in England may vary, will increase the consistency of access to treatments, and help stimulate improvements in cancer treatment and outcomes for patients.
Asked by: Chloe Smith (Conservative - Norwich North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an assessment of the reasons for which the NHS missed its target of 70% of invited women to be screened for breast cancer in 2022-23.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
The Department is committed to improving uptake in the NHS Breast Screening Programme. NHS England has commissioned evaluative projects to look at ways to improve uptake, and to understand why women may not attend breast screening. These include: actively following up with women who have missed an appointment or not engaged with the service; looking at the reasons why women do not attend screenings, to address any barriers; and assessing the impact on screening uptake using different invitation methodologies with reference to factors such as age, previous screening history, including attendance at first invitation and subsequent invites, and deprivation. These projects are expected to report by April 2024.
Asked by: Chloe Smith (Conservative - Norwich North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help increase the uptake of breast cancer screening in (a) England and (b) Norwich.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
The Government has invested £10 million of funding for the breast screening programme, which provided 28 new breast screening units and nearly 60 upgrades, to be targeted at areas with the greatest challenges of uptake and coverage. NHS England has developed a national plan in collaboration with key stakeholders, to improve uptake within the breast screening programme.
In the East of England, NHS England will work with the Breast Screening Service and the Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care Board to undertake a gap analysis and prioritise actions, and to look at options to increase its resilience by working with other local providers as a network.
Asked by: Chloe Smith (Conservative - Norwich North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the rollout of community diagnostic centres on the time taken to diagnose less survivable cancers.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
The Government is taking steps through NHS England to improve outcomes for cancer patients, including those cancers mentioned by the Less Survivable Cancer Taskforce, namely lung, liver, brain, oesophageal, pancreatic and stomach. Diagnostic checks are a key part of cancer pathways and the 150 community diagnostic centres (CDCs) opened by the Government will give earlier diagnostic tests, benefitting millions of patients including those who are referred with suspected less survivable cancers. National Health Service systems have been asked to prioritise CDC capacity towards their most challenged cancer pathways, where this is clinically appropriate, and these centres have delivered over six million additional tests for all elective activity since July 2021. The CDC programme is on track to meet its target to open up to 160 CDCs by March 2025, with many due to open ahead of schedule.
In November 2022, the NHS also announced an expansion of direct access to diagnostic scans across all general practices, to help cut waiting times and speeding up cancer diagnosis, or all-clear for patients. The NHS is now looking to widen the clinical pathways for which this is offered.
Making improvements across different cancer types is critical to helping achieve the NHS Long Term Plan ambition of diagnosing 75% of patients at an early stage by 2028 and reducing inequalities in cancer survival. NHS England has commissioned new cancer clinical audits covering six cancer types, some of which are less survivable: pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, kidney cancer and primary and metastatic breast cancer. All six audits will cover care delivered in England and Wales.
Asked by: Chloe Smith (Conservative - Norwich North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of an action plan for the less survivable cancers.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
Cancer is being diagnosed at earlier stages, more often, with survival rates improving across almost all types of cancer with the National Health Service seeing and treating record numbers of cancer patients over the last two years.
The planned Major Conditions Strategy will look at the early diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The strategy will look at a wide range of interventions and enablers to improve outcomes and experience for a range of cancer patients, including those less survivable cancers. We have already acted upon some of the areas that the 2020 Less Survivable Cancer Taskforce report requested, for example the introduction of targeted lung health checks, trials for cytosponge, and the roll out of non-specific symptom pathways. The report is available at the following link:
https://lesssurvivablecancers.org.uk/our-asks/
Asked by: Chloe Smith (Conservative - Norwich North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions she has had with international counterparts on their approach to the less survivable cancers.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
Cancer is being diagnosed at earlier stages, more often, with survival rates improving across almost all types of cancer with the National Health Service seeing and treating record numbers of cancer patients over the last two years.
The planned Major Conditions Strategy will look at the early diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The strategy will look at a wide range of interventions and enablers to improve outcomes and experience for a range of cancer patients, including those less survivable cancers. We have already acted upon some of the areas that the 2020 Less Survivable Cancer Taskforce report requested, for example the introduction of targeted lung health checks, trials for cytosponge, and the roll out of non-specific symptom pathways. The report is available at the following link:
https://lesssurvivablecancers.org.uk/our-asks/
Asked by: Chloe Smith (Conservative - Norwich North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she plans to take to tackle less survivable cancers in the Major Conditions Strategy.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
Cancer is being diagnosed at earlier stages, more often, with survival rates improving across almost all types of cancer with the National Health Service seeing and treating record numbers of cancer patients over the last two years.
The planned Major Conditions Strategy will look at the early diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The strategy will look at a wide range of interventions and enablers to improve outcomes and experience for a range of cancer patients, including those less survivable cancers. We have already acted upon some of the areas that the 2020 Less Survivable Cancer Taskforce report requested, for example the introduction of targeted lung health checks, trials for cytosponge, and the roll out of non-specific symptom pathways. The report is available at the following link:
https://lesssurvivablecancers.org.uk/our-asks/
Asked by: Chloe Smith (Conservative - Norwich North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an estimate of the amount of ringfenced NHS dental funding that Integrated Care Boards have released to non-dentistry budgets to cover costs associated with strike action in the NHS in (a) 2023 and (b) 2024.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
NHS England provided guidance for integrated care boards (ICBs) that requires dental allocations to be ringfenced in 2023/24, with any unused resources re-directed to improve National Health Service dental access in the first instance and not spent on other services. In November 2023, NHS England confirmed that where ICBs had not spent all of their allocation on improving access to dentistry, they would be able to retain any underspend and use this to balance their bottom line and any other pressures. ICBs will decide how to use any forecast underspend in line with this guidance. We are currently considering arrangements for 2024/25.
There are no current estimates of how much dental ringfence NHS dental funding has been used to support costs associated with strike action. NHS England has issued additional funding to systems of £800 million so far in this financial year to directly cover the costs of strikes.
Asked by: Chloe Smith (Conservative - Norwich North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to page 130 of the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, if she will ensure that allocations of undergraduate dental training places in 2028 and 2031 are allocated to areas where levels of demand for NHS dentistry services are greatest.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
We are establishing a governance structure to work with the Office for Students and key stakeholders to develop a methodology for allocating dental undergraduate student expansion, focussing on areas that have dental workforce challenges and aligning the methodology principles to that being developed for medical expansion.