NHS: Cancer Patients

Lord Cotter Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

The noble Baroness is right. In 2006 one in five of all new cancers was picked up in an emergency setting. That has reduced to one in four. We are making progress. I think we all accept that our performance on cancer outcomes has lagged behind the best in Europe. The strategy developed by Harpal Kumar is designed to address that. We are making progress but we have some way to go.

[Lord Cotter (LD)]

My Lords, what is being done, additionally, towards the prevention of cancer? There is a lot of feeling that the food chain is adulterated through the use of pesticides and such like. Will the Minister consider doing work in the direction of prevention and investigating possible causes?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, considerable research is going on into precisely the area that the noble Lord refers to. He talked about prevention, which is a hugely important area. Early awareness is also very important. We are running these Be Cancer Aware campaigns; at the moment there is a campaign going on around lung cancer to get early detection. I will investigate further and see what we are doing to investigate the root causes of cancer—whether there is any link to pesticides, for example.