Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, What discussions she has had with (a) NHS England and (b) Integrated care boards on using Community Diagnostic Centres to reduce health inequalities.

My Rt hon. Friend, the Secretary of State has regular discussions with NHS England on the progress of the community diagnostic centre (CDC) programme, including how CDCs are delivering against the programme aims, and supporting a reduction in health inequalities.

CDCs aim to enhance diagnostic capacity in underserved communities, with NHS England prioritising their placement in areas identified through health deprivation maps to target and address disparities in life expectancy. Bids for new CDCs went through a thorough approval process assessing local diagnostic capacity, health inequalities, transport links, and cost-effectiveness. Cases were further scrutinised by clinical and diagnostic experts prior to final approval by NHS England.

Funding for CDCs has been allocated so that regions with unmet needs received more funding. This will help to tackle health inequalities by directing funding to areas of need. NHS England is working on a plan to ensure sufficient workforce capacity, including for CDCs, to enable workforce expansion with the right skills and roles, in the right locations and at the right time. This includes reliable recruitment routes to deliver the required uplift in staffing. In 2022/23, this resulted in over 4,300 new starters across the training pipeline for cancer and diagnostics.

There are record numbers of people working in the National Health Service overall, and the NHS has recently published a Long Term Workforce Plan which sets out long term workforce projections. The Government has backed the plan with over £2.4 billion to fund additional education and training places over five years.