Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to reduce waiting times for the (a) diagnosis and (b) treatment of bowel cancer.

Lord Darzi’s report has set out the scale of the challenges we face in fixing the National Health Service, and the need to improve cancer waiting time performance and cancer survival. In particular, he has highlighted the need to improve the number of patients starting their treatment within 62 days of referral, and increase the number of patients diagnosed at an earlier stage.

The NHS will maximise the pace of the roll-out of additional diagnostic capacity, delivering the final year of the three-year investment plan for establishing Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs) and ensuring timely implementation of the new CDC locations, and upgrades to existing CDCs, with capacity prioritised for cancer diagnostics.

We are committed to transforming diagnostic services, and will support the NHS to increase capacity to meet the demand for diagnostic services through investment in new capacity, including magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography scanners. Furthermore, in 2024/25, we will continue to extend the NHS Bowel Cancer Screening Programme to additional cohorts, specifically to 50 to 52-year olds.