Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help increase the diagnosis rate of cancer at stages one and two in adults aged between 18 and 50.

The National Health Service (NHS) is implementing non-specific symptom pathways for patients who do not fit clearly into a single urgent cancer referral pathway. These pathways will also support the NHS to meet the new Faster Diagnosis Standard which will ensure that all patients who are referred for the investigation of suspected cancer find out whether they have cancer or not within 28 days.

To encourage people to get in touch with their general practitioner  if they notice or are worried about symptoms that could be cancer, NHS England is running the ‘Help Us, Help You’ campaign, which seeks to address the barriers that are deterring patients from accessing the NHS.