Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what progress his Department has made on diagnosis rates of brain tumours in the last 10 years; and if he will make a statement.

Improving Outcomes: A Strategy for Cancer, published on 12 January 2011, stated that general practitioners (GPs) need easy access to the right diagnostic tests to diagnose or exclude cancer earlier. The strategy committed over £450 million over four years, to achieve early diagnosis of cancer, including improving access to key diagnostic tests, such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans to support the diagnosis of brain cancer. The funding was also designed to cover subsequent testing and treatment in secondary care.

In 2012, the Department published Direct Access to Diagnostic Tests for Cancer,Best Practice Referral Pathways for General Practitioners. The document includes criteria for accessing key diagnostic tests including MRI brain scan and aims to raise awareness of the symptoms that require urgent referral to specialists and sets out where a direct referral for an MRI brain scan may benefit patients through achieving a faster diagnosis. GPs are able to access these tests directly in cases where the two week urgent referral pathway is not appropriate but a patient's symptoms require further investigation. The intention is that more people presenting with relevant symptoms will be tested and at an earlier stage.

NHS England monitors the use of these diagnostic tests through the Diagnostic Imaging Dataset. Latest provisional data published by NHS England on 27 March 2014 for the period November 2012 to November 2013, showed that over a quarter of all tests that may have been used to diagnose or discount cancer were requested by GPs under direct access arrangements. In that period, 509,215 MRI tests were requested including 35,055 through direct GP access arrangements. The published data is available at:

www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/diagnostic-imaging-dataset/diagnostic-imaging-datasetdiagnostic-imaging-dataset-2013-14-data/.

Information on diagnosis rates of brain tumours is not centrally collected. Information on number of patients with suspected brain or central nervous system tumours who were seen by a specialist within two weeks from a GP referral is provided in the attached tables, for the last 10 years.

Before 2009, the operational standard for two week waits was 98%. Starting from the 1 of January 2009, the basis for reporting waiting times data was changed. The new standards were set to be more in line with the already implemented referral to treatment routes. The scope of cover for the new standards was widened (as set out in the Cancer Reform Strategy 2008), and the collection was made simpler by not using clock pauses. From 2009 onwards the operational standard for two week waits was set to 93% (assumed to be the maximum sustainable performance level) including tolerances for:

- The number of patients who make themselves unavailable or decline an appointment within two weeks.

- Patients who cancel a booked outpatient appointment (giving advance notice), and rebook appointments outside of 14-days.