Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what (a) funding and (b) additional support NHS England has made available to Cancer Alliances to ensure each operates at least one targeted lung health check project from 2022-23.

Up to £70 million of targeted funding under the National Health Service Cancer Programme’s Service Development Funding budget has been made available to support the running of Targeted Lung Health Checks (TLHC) in 2022/23. This will include the expansion of the programme to ensure a project in each Cancer Alliance.

NHS England and NHS Improvement also supports the delivery of the TLHC programme with standard protocols, expert advice, and nationally procured and coordinated quality assurance and training.

There are currently nine Cancer Alliances without a TLHC project. NHS England and NHS Improvement plan to expand the TLHC programme in 2022/23 to ensure that each of these Cancer Alliances has at least one TLHC programme. We estimate an additional eight computerised tomography (CT) scanners will be needed to facilitate this expansion.