Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing a 10-year national cancer plan.

The Health Mission sets the objective of building a National Health Service fit for the future. As part of that work, and in response to Lord Darzi’s report, we have launched an extensive programme of engagement to develop a 10-Year Health Plan to reform the NHS. The plan will set out a bold agenda to deliver on the three big shifts from hospitals to the community, from analogue to digital, and from sickness to prevention.

In addition, following publication of the 10-Year Health Plan, we will develop a new national cancer plan, which will include further details on how we will improve outcomes for cancer patients.

We are now in discussions about what form that plan should take, and what its relationship to the 10-Year Health Plan and the Government’s wider Health Mission should be, and will provide updates on this at the earliest opportunity.