Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the projected slippage is against efficiency plans across integrated care systems in the current financial year.

Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

For 2025/26, there is an efficiency and savings target of approximately £11,076 million across all integrated care systems. At month six, the projected delivery for the year remains all but on track against the total efficiency and savings target, with a forecasted shortfall of £5.7 million.

The table below sets out the efficiencies and savings delivered by systems since 2022:

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to his NHS Pay Review Body remit letter: 2026 to 2027, what the expected annual financial impact is of changes to the implementation of the NHS Job Evaluation Scheme.

Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

This specific assessment has not been made. No recent changes have been made to the Job Evaluation Scheme (JES) itself. Some job profiles have been updated to be assessed against locally.

Following a national review by the Job Evaluation Group, the updated nursing and midwifery national profiles were republished by the NHS Staff Council on 3 June 2025. These changes did not change implementation of the JES or banding outcomes. During the evidence collection process for the nursing and midwifery national profile review, we were made aware that job documentation was often outdated, leading to concerns about pay banding outcomes through inconsistent local application of the JES.

Any financial impact will largely depend on current local job evaluation practices and subsequent application of the revised profiles. The NHS England letter titled Agenda for Change non-pay deal recommendations – NHS job evaluation, dated 3 June 2025, was clear with employers that where there is out of date practice, they are accountable for correctly implementing the scheme and must ensure that all changes are implemented effectively within existing budget constraints.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what has his department identified as the drivers of the recent trend in specialised commissioning high cost devices as noted in the NHS England Financial performance update of 22 September 2025.

Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The most significant driver of the growth in the expenditure noted in the financial update is an increased volume in clinical activity and the use of implantable devices to treat patients. This has been driven by the overall growth in elective activity as part of the elective care recovery programme.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what is being done to improve the regulatory approval process for personalised medicines to treat cancer.

Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has completed a public consultation on its draft guideline on individualised mRNA cancer immunotherapies, a new type of personalised cancer treatment. These technologies use cutting-edge science such as artificial intelligence to design a medicine tailored to each patient’s unique tumour profile.

We received positive responses from across the life sciences community, the National Health Service, patient groups, academics, and international regulators. Feedback recognised the United Kingdom’s leadership in this area, while calling for greater clarity in some aspects of the guideline.

In response, we will refine the guideline to ensure regulatory expectations are clearly articulated, without hampering innovation. This will facilitate faster access to these promising new therapies, while upholding our standards of safety, quality, and efficacy. The final version of the guideline will be published in the coming months, with future updates anticipated as the regulatory experience evolves in this rapidly developing field.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many community diagnostic centres were open at the end of (a) 2022-23, (b) 2023-24, (c) 2024-25, and are expected to be at the end of (d) 2025-26.

Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The following table sets out the number of community diagnostic centres (CDCs) which had started delivering activity, namely having gone live, and which were fully operational, delivering all modalities proposed in their approved business cases, from permanent facilities, from 2022/23 to 2024/25:

Source: NHS England

Notes:

1. The table includes CDCs operating from temporary capacity while the permanent CDC build is completed.
2. For 2025/26, the numbers include CDC sites which are anticipated to be fully operational by the end of March 2026 based on current delivery plans.

The Elective Reform Plan sets out that the Government will deliver additional CDC capacity in 2025/26 by expanding several existing CDCs and building up to five new CDCs. The locations of both new and expanded CDC schemes will be confirmed in due course. This is funded as part of £600 million of capital investment for diagnostics in 2025/26, which my rt. Hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, set out in her June 2025 statement.

The plan also commits to opening more CDCs 12 hours per day, seven days a week, meaning patients can access vital diagnostic tests around busy working lives. Upon entering office in July 2024, 63 CDCs were offering at least one diagnostic service out of hours, available to patients 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

The latest position at the end of November 2025 is that 101 CDCs are offering at least one service to this standard, an increase of 38 from July 2024. By the end of March 2026, this number is currently planned to increase to 116.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many patients have received checks under the NHS Targeted Lung Health Check and NHS Lung Cancer Screening Programme per month in each of the last three years.

Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The National Health Service is currently rolling out the National Lung Cancer Screening Programme to people with a history of smoking. The following table shows the number of participants who attended an appointment through the NHS Lung Cancer Screening Programme each month, between April 2022 and September 2025:

Source: the NHS England Lung Cancer Screening Programme.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if she will provide a list of all transport schemes given approval to progress following the Spending Review which had a lower benefit cost ratio score than the Ely Area Rail Capacity Enhancement.

Answered by Keir Mather - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

The Ely Area Capacity Enhancement (EACE) scheme was paused by the previous government in 2021, and no further funding was allocated to develop, update, or progress the EACE business case. As a result, there has been no ongoing work from which to produce a current or up-to-date benefit–cost ratio, meaning there is no basis upon which to provide the comparisons requested.

Found: COMMONS COMMISSION / MEC Monday 17 November 2025 Present: The Speaker, in the Chair Steve Barclay

Found: OF COMMONS COMMISSION/MEC Monday 27 October 2025 Present: The Speaker, in the Chair Steve Barclay

Found: COMMONS COMMISSION / MEC Monday 8 September 2025 Present: The Speaker, in the Chair Steve Barclay

Found: Watch the meeting Members present: Steve Barclay (Chair); Luke Akehurst; Irene Campbell; Paul Davies

Found: Watch the meeting Members present: Steve Barclay (Chair); Luke Akehurst; Irene Campbell; Paul Davies

Found: Watch the meeting Members present: Steve Barclay (Chair); Luke Akehurst; Irene Campbell; Paul Davies

Found: Watch the meeting Members present: Steve Barclay (Chair); Luke Akehurst; Irene Campbell; Paul Davies