Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what data NHS trusts are collecting on interruptions to cancer treatment for existing patients during the covid-19 outbreak.

Multi-disciplinary teams use patient tracking lists to ensure patients receive timely treatment and NHS England and NHS Improvement use a variety of data sources to calculate the number of patients waiting longer than a certain period for treatments, as well as informing action to reduce these numbers. This data includes published cancer waiting times data on activity, referrals and waiting times, as well as management information which can give a week to week view of activity and the current scale of the waiting list. Any decision to reschedule cancer surgery will be a last resort and patients will be given the dates for their new treatment at the earliest opportunity.