Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what medical programmes his Department supports in relation to (a) advanced prostate cancer and (b) locally advanced prostate cancer in the North West.

Within Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Alliance, our programme includes the delivery and implementation of a rapid diagnostic and treatment pathway for prostate cancer to deliver the 62-day standard and planning guidance. We are also focusing on implementation of risk stratified follow up pathways for patients following their prostate treatment. The availability of support, rehabilitation and services to promote self-management has greatly improved across our Alliance region as a result of this programme. All urology units in Cheshire and Merseyside are involved in these developments.

Our Alliance is also one of five pilot sites nationally offering access to a quality of life survey aimed at highlighting the longer-term impact of a cancer diagnosis and treatment. This quality of life metric data will be developed with Public Health England and will further highlight variance in outcomes for people affected by cancer and help to inform our plans going forward.

Within Lancashire and South Cumbria Cancer Alliance, three out of our four providers have implemented multi-parametric magnetic resonance imaging and the fourth is in discussion regarding options for how they could resource this. All our providers are working on implementing the national timed prostate cancer pathway and all have action plans. There are regular meetings with our providers and performance is monitored at our Cancer Alliance Board.

Risk Stratified follow up - our work is in line with national guidance to introduce the option of self-management follow up post treatment by the national timescale of March 2020.

Advanced prostate cancer cases are discussed at both local and network/specialist Multi-Disciplinary Teams, where clinical decisions are made regarding treatment options. These include:

- Radical surgery- robotic and non-robotic;

- Oncology;

- Hormone; and

- Palliative.

No decision is made without consultation with the patient to ensure they are fully aware of choices for them to make and this is supported by a Clinical Nurse Specialist.