Lung Cancer Screening

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend, an experienced parliamentarian, opens two different issues there. As he well knows, one is a question of tax, which, rightly, I say as a former Treasury Minister, is a matter for the Treasury. As for the roll-out of the programme, the additional cost of the programme will be £1 billion over the seven years. That is the additional cost of that expansion, but how it is funded will be an issue for the Treasury.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

Anybody who has lost a loved one through lung cancer will know what a horrible and cruel disease it is. Obviously, we welcome any move to improve screening and get more people screened. But I would be interested to know two things from the Secretary of State. First, in one of my local hospitals—recently, I asked a parliamentary question about this—only 77.8% of patients got an urgent referral within 62 days, so quite a lot of people did not. Secondly, how much of the £1 billion will be used to bring in the extra clinicians and staff who will be needed to do the screening?

[Steve Barclay]

I am sorry, but I missed the second part of the question. On the speed of treatment, that is why significant work is going into the faster diagnosis standard, which was hit for the first time in February. Part of the additional capacity going in—the extra 108 diagnostic centres—is to boost that capacity and speed up that treatment. There has been a surge in demand; a significant uptick in the nature of demand. That is the backlog we have been working through as a consequence of the pandemic, but the additional capacity is to address that exact point.