Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to ensure that GPs make earlier referrals in cases of possible pancreatic cancer.

Achieving earlier diagnosis of cancer is key to our ambition to save an additional 5,000 lives per year by 2014-15. However, we know that early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer can be very difficult as the symptoms are shared with a wide range of benign conditions.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Referral Guidelines for Suspected Cancer (2005) are available to help general practitioners (GPs) assess when it is appropriate to refer patients for suspected cancer, including pancreatic cancer. NICE is in the process of updating the guidelines to ensure that these reflect latest evidence and can continue to support GPs to identify patients with suspected cancer symptoms and urgently refer them as appropriate. NICE's anticipated publication date for the revised guidelines is May 2015.

The cancer waiting times two week urgent suspected cancer standard – which is included in the NHS Constitution – ensures that, where GPs are concerned that a patient might have cancer, they are seen quickly by secondary care.

In 2013, Macmillan Cancer Support, partly funded by the Department, piloted an electronic cancer decision support tool for GPs to use in their routine practice.

The tool covered pancreatic cancers and was designed to help GPs identify patients whom they might not otherwise refer urgently for suspected cancer. Over 400 GP practices across England participated in the pilot. A full evaluation of the pilot is currently being undertaken by Cancer Research UK and the Department's Policy Research Unit and Macmillan Cancer Support is working with GP IT software companies to further develop, promote and disseminate the tool.

At a local level, it is for individual clinical commissioning groups to promote and enhance the diagnostic capability to deliver better outcomes. Surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatments that may be used for pancreatic cancer are commissioned at the moment by NHS England. NHS England's pancreatic cancer service specification clearly defines what it expects to be in place for providers to offer evidence-based, safe and effective pancreatic cancer services.

NHS England has recently asked NICE to develop a clinical guideline and quality standard on pancreatic cancer. These will complement the existing Improving Outcomes for Upper Gastro-Intestinal Cancers guidance that describes best practice in the delivery of services for patients with all types of upper gastro-intestinal cancer, including pancreatic cancer.