Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to implement the recommendations of Bowel Cancer UK's report entitled Delivering the ambitions of the NHS Long Term Plan: A review of progress of bowel cancer in England, published on 3 December 2024.

The Health Mission sets the objective of building a National Health Service fit for the future. As part of that work, and in response to Lord Darzi’s report, we have launched an extensive programme of engagement to develop a 10-Year Health Plan to reform the NHS. The plan will set out a bold agenda to deliver on the three big shifts, from hospital to community, from analogue to digital, and from sickness to prevention.

Lord Darzi’s independent investigation into the NHS highlighted that there is more to be done to increase the speed at which patients are diagnosed with, and treated for, cancer. His report will inform our 10-year plan to reform the NHS, which will include further details on how we will improve cancer diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes, including for bowel cancer. We are also currently in discussions about what form a potential cancer plan for England should take, including its relationship to the 10-Year Health Plan and the Government’s wider Health Mission, and will provide updates in due course.

In addition, the Department is taking steps to improve the rate of early diagnosis for all cancers, including bowel and bowel-related cancers. We will support the NHS to transform diagnostic services by spending £1.5 billion on new surgical hubs and diagnostic scanners, to build capacity for over 30,000 more procedures and 1.25 million diagnostic tests.