Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the effectiveness of the Faster Diagnosis Standard.

The Department has not made a formal assessment of the effectiveness of the Faster Diagnosis Standard (FDS) but works closely with NHS England who are responsible for managing performance of National Health Service providers. National performance of the FDS, which aims to ensure patients have cancer diagnosed or ruled out within 28 days of referral from a general practitioner or screening services, was at 73.5% performance in June 2023. FDS performance has averaged over 71% since collection started in April 2021, and we are confident the NHS will meet the ambition of 75% by March 2024.

NHS England plans to streamline cancer pathways to support diagnosis within 28 days by implementing non-symptom specific (NSS) pathways for patients who present with non-specific symptoms that can indicate several cancers, as well as implementing timed cancer pathways. By March 2024, the NSS programme will achieve full population coverage across England for non-specific symptom pathways as set out in the 2023/24 NHS Planning Guidance.

Diagnostic checks are a key part of many elective care pathways. NHS England’s ambition is that 95% of patients needing a diagnostic check receive it within six weeks by March 2025. £2.3 billion was awarded at the 2021 Spending Review 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, expanding and protecting elective planned diagnostic services. There are 116 CDCs currently operational that have delivered over four million tests since July 2021.