Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans the Government has to provide funding to breast centres to help (a) deliver improved timely care and (b) meet service demands due to breast imaging workforce shortages.

Full details on funding allocations towards National Health Service workforce budgets in 2021-22 will be subject to a detailed financial planning exercise and finalised in due course.

The NHS is supporting breast screening services to recover from the impact of COVID-19 and to improve uptake so that cancers can be identified and treated earlier. Breast services are expected to benefit from the NHS Long Term Plan commitment to roll out Rapid Diagnostic Centres and the announcement in the Spending Review 2020 speech that ageing diagnostic machines will be replaced. Local health systems have been allocated additional funds to help manage the costs of COVID-19.