Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps are being taken to improve the time taken for red flag referrals for breast cancer to be seen.

It is a priority for the Government to support the National Health Service to diagnose cancer, including breast cancer, as early and quickly as possible, and to treat it faster, to improve outcomes for all patients across England.

The Department is responsible for healthcare in England and therefore has not made a formal assessment on the timescales for red flag referrals for breast cancer across the whole of the United Kingdom.

As the first step to ensuring early diagnosis and treatment in England, NHS England has delivered an extra 100,000 operations, scans, and appointments each week since the start of this administration. This is supported by an increase in capacity to meet the demand for diagnostic services through investment in new magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography scanners.

The Department recognises that there is more to be done to ensure that patients have timely access to diagnosis, and remains committed to diagnosing all cancer types earlier, including breast cancer. To tackle late diagnoses, the NHS is implementing non-specific symptom pathways for patients who present with symptoms such as weight loss and fatigue, which do not clearly align to a tumour type.

Reducing variation in cancer care in England, including the movement of patients through breast cancer care pathways, is a priority for the Government. To address this, NHS England funded audits into primary and metastatic breast cancer. Using routine data collected on patients diagnosed with breast cancer in an NHS setting, the audits bring together information to look at what is being done well, where it is being done well, and what needs to be done better. On 11 September 2025, the second State of the Nation report for primary and metastatic breast cancer was published by the National Cancer Audit Collaborating Centre, and officials in the Department and NHS England are acting on the findings where appropriate.