Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the cost to the public purse was of NHS spending on cancer (a) research and (b) treatment in each of the last five years.

The information is not available in the requested format for cancer care in England. The Department allocated £14 billion to NHS England from 2022/23 to 2024/25 specifically for the National Health Service in England to recover elective and cancer care. This comprised of £8 billion of resource funding and £5.9 billion of capital funding, as described in the November 2021 Budget and Spending Review. My Rt Hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s next budget, on 30 October 2024, will finalise the funding position in 2024/25 and 2025/26.

Lord Darzi’s report has set out the scale of the challenges we face in fixing the NHS in England, and the need to improve cancer waiting time performance and cancer survival. The report will inform the Government’s 10-Year Health Plan to reform the NHS in England, including further detail on how we will improve outcomes for cancer.