Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the quality of the implementation of National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines on management of metastatic malignant disease of unknown primary.

NHS England would expect that service provision for patients with cancer of unknown primary (CUP) takes into account National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines.

Services for people with cancer are subject to assessment and assurance through the National Cancer Peer Review Programme. Assessment of compliance is made against Commissioning for Quality and Innovation measures.

The Department does not collect information centrally on the proportion of hospitals in England which have implemented a multidisciplinary team for CUP.