Oral Answers to Questions Debate
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John Baron
Main Page: John Baron (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)Department Debates - View all John Baron's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(9 years, 1 month ago)
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George Freeman
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We are completely committed to tackling anti-microbial resistance, and reducing the volume of antibiotics prescribing is vital to that. We are a world leader in this field in tackling AMR. We have an expert group looking at how to improve diagnostic services in relation to AMR, and it has already identified what diagnostics are currently in use and what new technologies are on the horizon, including C-reactive protein point-of-care testing. The group is currently formulating conclusions. The public health Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), is looking forward to responding to my hon. Friend’s debate on Monday to set out more of the detail.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
The Government have done a very good job in getting one-year cancer survival rates into the DNA of the NHS as a means of encouraging clinical commissioning groups to promote earlier diagnosis—cancer’s magic key. Does the Minister agree that we all need to ensure that we keep the CCGs’ feet close to the fire as regards these one-year figures so that we do not just improve diagnostic testing in primary care, but improve screening rates, GP referral rates and awareness campaigns as a means of ensuring that we save the thousands of lives that are needlessly lost through late diagnosis?
George Freeman
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I pay tribute to his work on this through the independent cancer taskforce. The aim is to save 30,000 more lives a year by 2020. We are working with Harpal Kumar and Cancer Research UK on implementing its recommendations. NICE has set out new guidelines on clear ambitions and standards on how quickly patients should be referred for diagnostics. There is good news in that in 2014-15, compared with 2009-10, over 4.3 million more imaging and endoscopy tests were commonly used to diagnose cancers, but I agree that we have much more still to do.