Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The announcement the details of which I have just set out comes with £1.6 billion of the £20 billion uplift we are putting into the NHS written into the long-term plan, so the funding is there to deliver on this policy, too.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

The Secretary of State is right to say that early diagnosis provides more opportunity to cure and treat cancers. Some 60% of those treated for cancer will receive radiotherapy, and nearly every radiotherapy centre in the country has linear accelerators that are enabled to provide the advanced SABR, or stereotactic ablative body radiotherapy, technology, but Government—NHS England—contracts mean that out of the 52 centres in England no more than 20 are contracted to actually use this technology. That means that either patients are not receiving the highest quality life-saving standard of treatment that they could be or that trusts are providing it anyway but are not being paid and valuable data on mistreatment are being completely lost. Will the right hon. Gentleman order NHS England to stop this recklessness, and frankly lethal, nonsense and agree to every—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. [Interruption.] Order. The thrust of the question is entirely clear. I was going to offer the hon. Gentleman an Adjournment debate on the subject until I realised that he had in fact just conducted it.