Cancer Referral Targets

Lord Markham Excerpts

Monday 5th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Merron]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that NHS trusts in England meet their target for cancer patients to be treated within two months of an urgent GP referral.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Markham) (Con)]

My Lords, NHS England continues to actively support those trusts requiring the greatest help to cut cancer waiting lists. This work is backed by funding of more than £8 billion from 2022-23 to 2024-25 to help drive up and protect elective activity, including for cancer. To increase capacity, we are investing in up to 160 community diagnostic centres—CDCs. Within CDCs, we are prioritising cancer pathways to help reduce the time from patient presentation to diagnosis and treatment.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, nearly 90% of cancer patients in 2010 received their first treatment within two months of urgent referral, which exceeded the operational standard, something the Government have not achieved since 2014, while last year fewer than 65% of cancer patients were treated within this standard. With earlier intervention being key to saving lives, what is the Government’s estimate of how many lives are lost each year due to failure to meet this agreed standard? What is the impact on survival rates of continued delays to a workforce plan promised long before the pandemic and still being reported as not having been signed off by the Treasury?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

The noble Baroness is correct about early diagnosis. That is why we have invested in 160 CDCs, which will be primarily focused on cancer, and why there are 11,000 more staff than in 2010, a 50% increase, as well as 3,000 more consultants, a 63% increase. We are seeing more supply than ever but at the same time, given Covid and the pent-up demand caused by that, we are also seeing more than demand than ever. The major expansion of supply is focused on making sure that we quickly detect those people.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My noble friend the Minister mentioned Covid. One thing we learned from Covid was the importance of testing at home and rolling out home testing. A few weeks ago, I received a letter from the NHS asking me to provide a sample to test for a certain cancer—a test given to people my age. I thought that that was very interesting. How much more rollout of home testing are the Government intending to do, so that we can catch these cancers early—not just colon cancer but a whole range of cancers?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I am not exactly familiar with the test that my noble friend might have taken but many of us will have heard about the early promise shown by the GRAIL programme. It is a simple blood test and, right now, has a two-thirds success rate for early detection. Those are early indicators, but early diagnosis and innovative approaches such as the GRAIL blood test are important.

[Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)]

My Lords—

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[Lord Markham (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely correct that we always need to keep these things in balance. What I was trying to express was that we have an opportunity to innovate in this space. We have another innovation in our targeted lung cancer programme, which has now been rolled out to 43 sites. In 2019, 50% of such cancers were not detected until stage 4. Now, through mobile delivery of services to these sites, we are detecting 60% of such cancers at stage 1. Those are the sort of innovations for which we have very solid data, and they do show promise for the future.

[Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)]

My Lords, national waiting times for cancer treatment have fallen way off target, as the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, set out in her Question, but these national numbers mask significant regional variations. In March, they ranged from 45% of referrals within the target time in Birmingham and Solihull to 80% within target in Kent and Medway. How does the Minister account for such significant variations and what are the Government doing to level up those integrated care board areas that are falling furthest below the targets?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

That is exactly the example I was giving when I mentioned lung cancer targets, where mobile devices are being used. Interestingly, the most deprived areas have been targeted because they are often areas of high smoking, and these are the areas where they have managed to get screening times down the most. We have the opportunity to put CDCs in the areas of most need. We all agree that there is unprecedented demand and that we have to expand supply; there is no other way to meet that demand but to expand supply.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

Having gone through treatment myself in the last few years—successfully so far—I want to ask the Minister whether anybody is measuring the growth of mental illness among people who know that they need treatment but where it is constantly delayed. The pressure on those people and their families is enormous. Is there any measure of extra mental illness caused by this delay?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

The noble Lord is correct. I have a friend who is in that situation. We all understand the stress of waiting and what it can cause. I will come back to the noble Lord on the research into the impact on mental health. I absolutely accept that a lot more needs to be done, but one of the main things is the target of diagnosis within 28 days, which we are now hitting 75% of the time. That gives people peace of mind quickly, particularly as 94% of those people end up being negative—only 6% are positive. Peace of mind is crucial here.

[Lord Warner (CB)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that in 2017 this House, under the distinguished leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, produced a report which said that the sustainability of the NHS was in doubt unless there was a workforce plan? Would he like to remind his friend the Chancellor, who was the Health Secretary at the time, of that report?

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[Lord Markham (Con)]

I know that the Chancellor is very aware of it, and of course it was the Chancellor who in the autumn kicked off that this workforce plan should be done. The Chancellor is quite rightly very involved in making sure we get the right answer now.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, during the first lockdown we had some 40,000 fewer cancer diagnoses than we would have expected during a normal period. Cancer develops slowly and we cannot yet calculate the lethality, but will my noble friend the Minister consider, before we ever contemplate another policy of mass house arrest, the long-term consequences for health of people being confined to home? It may be, as we see the excess mortality figures coming in from around the world, that lockdowns ended up killing more people than they saved.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

My noble friend is correct that there were knock-on implications of lockdown, cancer detection rates being one of them. Noble Lords have heard me speak of Chris Whitty’s concern about heart disease because those check-ups were missed, and mental health is another area. Clearly, these are some of the things we are hoping to learn from the Covid inquiry, so that we know the impact of lockdowns, not just on restricting Covid but more widely, on the population as a whole.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, have the Government made an assessment of the cost of false positive tests in this kind of screening and the cost to patients?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

When the noble Lord says this kind of screening, I am not quite sure which type of screening he is referring to.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

For cancer.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I did not know whether the noble Lord was referring to GRAIL and the comment from the noble Lord, Lord Patel, about false positives. This question probably deserves a detailed reply but, as with any test, it is not about just specificity but sensitivity, which is key, so that the number of false positives is minimised. I will provide a detailed reply.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord has referred at several points in this discussion to early diagnosis. He will be aware that cancer very often develops later in life and that the older you are the greater the risk is. Yet older people are excluded from routine screening tests past a certain age. Can he explain the thinking behind that?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

It is about trying to make sure that we are screening those of highest risk, given the impact on quality of life, and catching it early. I know that is very specifically the thinking around it. Beyond this, while we know the challenge around waiting lists, we have increased the supply through a 15% increase in activity. We are supplying more than ever, but we know that a lot more needs to be done to meet the demand.