Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made an assessment of the effectiveness of non-specific symptom pathways in diagnosing blood cancers in each of the last three years.

We will get the National Health Service diagnosing cancer earlier and treating it faster, including blood cancer. This is supported by NHS England’s key ambition on cancer, to meet the Faster Diagnosis Standard, which sets a target of 28 days from urgent referral by a general practitioner or screening programme to patients being told that they have cancer, or that cancer is ruled out.

NHS England has implemented non symptom specific pathways for patients who present with non-specific symptoms, or combinations thereof, that can indicate several different cancers. This includes leukaemia, which can present non-specific symptoms, such as unexpected weight loss and night sweats. From our national evaluation, blood cancers are one of the most common cancer types diagnosed through these pathways.