Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress has been made on the Cancer Plan commitment to define and count recurrent cancers, starting with metastatic breast cancer in 2026.

The National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) in NHS England collects, curates, quality assures, and analyses data about people with cancer across the whole of England.

The NDRS data improvement team is working with National Health Service trusts to provide support and guidance to improve their reporting of non-primary cancers, focused on the specific recurrence and progression data fields included in the Cancer Outcomes and Services Dataset. This includes updates on trust submitted recurrence data in our routine ‘diagnoses by provider’ dashboard, available on our NHS facing, secure CancerStats2 site.

The Government has set out in the National Cancer Plan for England an ambition to define and count recurrent cancers, starting with metastatic breast cancer from 2026. Existing data improvement activity within NDRS provides a foundation to support progress towards this ambition.