Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he plans to take to increase the allocation of funding from the public purse to NHS cancer services in (a) north east London and (b) England.

To receive national funding the North East London Cancer Commissioning Group are creating delivery plans, in line with the National Health Service 2021/22 Planning Guidance, across elective inpatient, outpatient and diagnostic services for adults and children for April 2021 to September 2021, with the aim to reach the funding threshold of 85% of activity by July.

Nationally, the Spending Review 2020 confirmed an additional £3 billion for the NHS on top of the long-term settlement, to support the NHS recovery from the impact of COVID-19. Cancer patients will continue to be prioritised with the NHS and will benefit from the approximately £1 billion to begin tackling the elective backlog and approximately £1.5 billion to help ease existing pressures in the NHS caused by the pandemic. This package will be supported by £325 million capital funding for NHS diagnostics, which is enough to replace over two thirds of imaging equipment over 10 years old.