Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent progress his Department has made on reducing waiting times for bowel cancer referrals.

To reduce waiting times, including in bowel cancer referrals, the Government has taken steps by working with NHS England to publish the delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlogs in elective care in February 2022. To deliver this plan, the Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to help drive up and protect elective activity, including cancer diagnosis and treatment activity.

Diagnostics are crucial part of all cancer pathways. The Government awarded £2.3 billion at the 2021 Spending Review to transform diagnostic services over the next three years. As part of this investment, up to 160 new Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs) will deliver additional, digitally connected, diagnostic capacity in England, providing patients with a coordinated set of diagnostic checks, including for cancer. To date, there are 92 CDCs currently operational that have delivered over 3 million additional tests since July 2021, including vital cancer checks.

The National Health Service is also continuing to roll-out faecal immunochemical tests (FIT) to support the clinical triage of patients on the lower gastrointestinal cancer pathway, with a clear expectation set out in NHS England’s 2023/24 Operational Planning that at least 80% of Faster Diagnosis Standard for lower gastrointestinal referrals should be accompanied by a FIT result.