Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he is taking steps to reduce waiting times for cancer treatment in (a) Romford constituency, (b) the London Borough of Havering and (c) England.

To support elective recovery and reduce waiting times in England, including for cancer treatment, 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. This will further be supported by the additional £3.3 billion of funding in each of the next two years announced at the Autumn Statement to support the National Health Service, enabling rapid action to improve emergency, elective and primary care performance towards pre-pandemic levels.

To support delivery of our cancer care priorities, including expanding treatment capacity across NHS hospital trusts, the Government is providing over £390 million in cancer service development funding to Cancer Alliances in each of the next two years.

In addition the Government has awarded £2.3 billion to transform diagnostic services over the next three years. Most of this will help increase the number of Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs) up to 160 by March 2025, prioritising CDCs for cancer diagnostics.