Asked by: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of support for cancer Multidisciplinary Team Coordinators in improving the (a) accuracy and (b) completeness of blood cancer data collection.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - 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 blood cancer, as early and quickly as possible, and to treat it faster, to improve outcomes for all patients across England.
NHS England understands that data collection helps to improve the experiences of people with cancer, including blood cancer, and has committed to ensuring that every person diagnosed with cancer has access to personalised care. This includes needs assessments, a care plan, and health and wellbeing information and support.
My rt. Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, announced that a National Cancer Plan for England will be published this year, supporting the Prime Minister’s mission to build an NHS fit for the future and to reduce the number of lives lost to cancer. As part of the National Cancer Plan, we are committed to working closely with partners and patient groups to shape the long-term vision for cancer, including for blood cancer. The 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 ongoing care. It will seek to improve every aspect of cancer care, including the design of services and the experiences and outcomes for people with cancer.
Asked by: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how the forthcoming National Cancer Plan and NHS Workforce Plan will together improve blood cancer patients' (a) outcomes and (b) experiences.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Cancer Plan will ensure that all cancer patients across England have access to the best cancer care and treatments. It will seek to improve every aspect of cancer care, including the design of services and the experience and outcomes for people with cancer, including those with blood cancer.
Recruitment to National Health Service roles is managed locally by NHS trusts and partner employers. However, NHS England is taking a range of actions to support the recruitment and retention of staff in the NHS cancer workforce. As of February 2025, there are over 1,800 full time equivalent doctors working in the speciality of clinical oncology in NHS trusts and other core organisations in England. This is almost 150, or 8.9%, more than last year.
The NHS Workforce Plan will ensure the NHS has the right people in the right places to deliver the care all patients need, including blood cancer patients, improving outcomes and experiences. This will include expanding specialty training places in key cancer professions, such as histopathology, clinical radiology, and gastroenterology. Targeted national campaigns and outreach activities, for example in clinical oncology, also promote cancer career pathways, with a focus on increasing applications.
Asked by: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of levels of of geographic variation in access to NHS approved treatments for people with blood cancer.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to providing patients with timely access to diagnosis and treatment, regardless of their location in the country.
The National Health Service has delivered an extra four million operations, scans, and appointments as the first step to ensuring earlier and faster access to treatment for patients.
The National Cancer Plan will include further details on improving outcomes for cancer patients in England, as well as speeding up diagnosis and treatment. It will ensure patients, including those with blood cancer, have timely access to the latest treatments and technology.
Asked by: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the National Cancer Plan will include commitments to (a) improve diagnostic pathways and (b) reduce delays in identifying blood cancers at an early stage.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government has announced that the National Cancer Plan will be published later this year, following the recent publication of the 10-Year Health Plan. The National Cancer Plan will ensure that all cancer patients, including patients with blood cancer, will have access to the best cancer care and treatments. It will have patients at its heart and will cover the entirety of the cancer pathway, from referral and diagnosis to treatment and ongoing care.
The Department is supporting the National Health Service to reduce the number of cancers diagnosed in emergency care settings, by improving waiting times for cancer diagnosis and treatment, starting by delivering an extra 40,000 operations, scans, and appointments each week.
Alongside improving cancer waiting time performance, the NHS has implemented non-specific symptom pathways for patients who present with vague and non-site-specific symptoms, which do not clearly align to a tumour type. This includes blood cancer, which is one of the most common cancers diagnosed via these pathways.
Further actions on improving the survival of all cancers, including blood cancer, will be outlined in the forthcoming National Cancer Plan.
Asked by: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to improve the (a) collection, (b) analysis and (c) reporting of blood cancer data to ensure it is comprehensive and consistent across England.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department remains committed to ensuring that the cancer workforce and healthcare professionals collect and have access to the most up-to-date data available. Cancer data collection is crucial in identifying areas of variation and disparity within cancer services, informing health strategies, and improving patient care.
The National Cancer Plan will include further details on how we will improve outcomes for cancer patients in England, as well as speeding up diagnosis and treatment. It will ensure patients, including those with blood cancer, have access to the latest treatments and technology. It will consider all aspects of cancer care, including data collection.
Asked by: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the (a) consistency and (b) quality of blood cancer data collection in England.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department remains committed to ensuring that the cancer workforce and healthcare professionals collect and have access to the most up-to-date data available. Cancer data collection is crucial in identifying areas of variation and disparity within cancer services, informing health strategies, and improving patient care.
The National Cancer Plan will include further details on how we will improve outcomes for cancer patients in England, as well as speeding up diagnosis and treatment. It will ensure patients, including those with blood cancer, have access to the latest treatments and technology. It will consider all aspects of cancer care, including data collection.
Asked by: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to improve coordination between (a) primary and (b) secondary care to ensure (i) timely and (ii) effective monitoring of patients diagnosed with Monoclonal Gammopathy of Undetermined Significance to enable early detection of blood cancer.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - 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 as early and quickly as possible, and to treat it faster, to improve outcomes for all patients across England. This includes the monitoring of patients with pre-cancerous conditions like monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) who carry a small risk of progressing to multiple myeloma or other related cancers.
My Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care announced that a National Cancer Plan for England will be published this year, supporting the Prime Minister’s mission to build an NHS fit for the future and reduce the number of lives lost to cancer. As part of the National Cancer Plan, we are committed to working closely with partners and patient groups to shape the long-term vision for cancer.
Patients diagnosed with MGUS must be appropriately and effectively monitored both in primary care and secondary care, with regular blood tests to check for any change in their condition and to ensure that any need for treatment can be met as soon as possible.
Our 10 year plan commits to shifting care from the hospital to the community, including diagnostic tests, and to ensuring care is more integrated across primary and secondary care. Diagnostic tests, such as blood tests, should be more easily accessible and located in the community where possible, which is more convenient for patients than going to hospital. In addition to diagnostic capacity in traditional settings such as general practices and hospitals, we have committed to build upon the current 170 community diagnostic centres that are open across the country by expanding a number of these and by building up to five new ones, as well as expanding the number that are open 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
Our Elective Reform Plan commits to more integrated working between primary and secondary care, including diagnostics. Further investment and improvement of the NHS electronic referral service will support effective joint clinical decision making and improve the quality of information shared between primary and secondary care.
Healthcare services provided by general practice, including phlebotomy and blood tests, are commissioned locally by integrated care boards based on population need.
Asked by: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to reduce geographic inequalities in access to approved blood cancer treatments in England.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Reducing inequalities in cancer diagnosis, care, and outcomes is a key priority for the National Cancer Plan. The plan will look at the targeted improvements needed across different cancer types to reduce disparities in cancer survival, and will develop interventions to tackle these. This includes looking at protected characteristics, as well as inequalities related to socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and geographic location.
The Government is committed to improving access for everyone to treatment and care for all cancer types, including blood cancer. To help achieve this, the National Health Service in England has delivered an extra 40,000 operations, scans, and appointments each week, to ensure early diagnosis and faster treatment.
The NHS England Cancer Programme also commissions clinical cancer audits, which provide timely evidence for cancer service providers of where patterns of care in England may vary, increase the consistency of access to treatments, and help stimulate improvements in cancer treatment and outcomes for patients, including those with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which is a type of blood cancer.
Asked by: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is planning to take through the National Cancer Plan to (a) improve early diagnosis rates and (b) reduce the number of those being diagnosed with blood cancer in an emergency care setting.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government has announced that the National Cancer Plan will be published later this year, following the recent publication of the 10-Year Health Plan. The National Cancer Plan will ensure that all cancer patients, including patients with blood cancer, will have access to the best cancer care and treatments. It will have patients at its heart and will cover the entirety of the cancer pathway, from referral and diagnosis to treatment and ongoing care.
The Department is supporting the National Health Service to reduce the number of cancers diagnosed in emergency care settings, by improving waiting times for cancer diagnosis and treatment, starting by delivering an extra 40,000 operations, scans, and appointments each week.
Alongside improving cancer waiting time performance, the NHS has implemented non-specific symptom pathways for patients who present with vague and non-site-specific symptoms, which do not clearly align to a tumour type. This includes blood cancer, which is one of the most common cancers diagnosed via these pathways.
Further actions on improving the survival of all cancers, including blood cancer, will be outlined in the forthcoming National Cancer Plan.
Asked by: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the National Cancer Plan will include specific targets for improving the early diagnosis rates of blood cancers.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government has announced that the National Cancer Plan will be published later this year, following the recent publication of the 10-Year Health Plan. The National Cancer Plan will ensure that all cancer patients, including patients with blood cancer, will have access to the best cancer care and treatments. It will have patients at its heart and will cover the entirety of the cancer pathway, from referral and diagnosis to treatment and ongoing care.
The Department is supporting the National Health Service to reduce the number of cancers diagnosed in emergency care settings, by improving waiting times for cancer diagnosis and treatment, starting by delivering an extra 40,000 operations, scans, and appointments each week.
Alongside improving cancer waiting time performance, the NHS has implemented non-specific symptom pathways for patients who present with vague and non-site-specific symptoms, which do not clearly align to a tumour type. This includes blood cancer, which is one of the most common cancers diagnosed via these pathways.
Further actions on improving the survival of all cancers, including blood cancer, will be outlined in the forthcoming National Cancer Plan.