Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of recent trends in the amount of time it takes to diagnose brain tumours in (a) children and (b) young adults on long-term health outcomes; and if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of implementing a brain tumour strategy to help improve (i) the coordination of approaches to funding research, (ii) treatment pathways and (iii) support services for people affected by brain tumours.

The Department recognises that children and young adults with brain cancer are often waiting too long for diagnosis. As part of our 10-Year Health Plan to radically reform our broken National Health Service, we will fight cancer on all fronts, from prevention to diagnosis, treatment, and research.

Brain cancer in children remains one of the hardest to treat cancers and a challenging area of research, but the Government is taking several steps to improve outcomes. In September 2024, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) announced new research funding opportunities for brain cancer research spanning both adult and paediatric populations. This includes a national NIHR Brain Tumour Research Consortium, to ensure the most promising research opportunities are made available to adult and child patients. This also included a new funding call to generate high quality evidence in brain tumour care, support before during and after treatment, quality of life, and patient rehabilitation.

To support faster and earlier diagnosis, we will address the challenges in diagnostic waiting times, providing the number of computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and other tests that are needed to reduce cancer waits. NHS England is delivering a range of interventions to support general practices in diagnosing brain cancer earlier, for example, in April 2020, NHS England introduced the early cancer diagnosis service specification for Primary Care Networks. This is designed to support improvements in rates of early cancer diagnosis by requiring Primary Care Networks to review the quality of their practices’ referrals for suspected cancer and take steps to improve this.

We are also improving treatment and support for brain tumour patients. NHS England has worked with the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission to designate centres of excellence in the management of brain tumours, with nine centres having achieved designation. The mission has a workstream on training to expand the brain tumour treatment workforce, in collaboration with NHS bodies, royal colleges, and charities.