Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 3 July 2013, Official Report, column 700W, on cancer, what steps he is taking to analyse progress made in achieving the ambition of preventing 5,000 avoidable premature deaths a year by 2014-15 as set out in Improving Outcomes: a Strategy for Cancer.

It is too early to be able to assess progress against the ambition to save an additional 5,000 lives per year by 2014-15, to halve the gap between the survival estimates in England and those in the best countries in Europe. However, we do know that cancer survival and mortality rates continue to improve and we are developing proxy measures to assess progress in a more timely manner, particularly in terms of the proportion of cancers diagnosed at stages one and two and cancers diagnosed through emergency routes.

The National Health Service and Public Health Outcomes Framework indicators and the clinical commissioning group (CCG) Outcomes Indicator Set are starting to enable us to assess progress, at national and local level. For example, data on one-year survival from all cancers and one-year survival from breast, lung and colorectal cancer were published as part of the CCG outcomes indicator set for the first time on 19 June 2014.

The Cancer Outcomes Strategy is backed with more than £750 million over the four year Spending Review period, including over £450 million to achieve early diagnosis. The additional money is funding over 2 million extra tests over four years and gives general practitioners (GPs) access to non-obstetric ultrasound – to support diagnosis of ovarian cancer; flexible sigmoidoscopy– to support the diagnosis of bowel cancer; and brain magnetic resonance imaging scans – to support the diagnosis of brain cancer. NHS England monitors the use of these tests through the Diagnostic Imaging Dataset. On 22 May 2014, NHS England published ‘Provisional Monthly Diagnostic Imaging Dataset Statistics' for the period from January 2013 to January 2014.

Over 34.2 million imaging tests were reported in England in the 12 months from February 2013 to January 2014. Over a quarter of all tests that may have been used to diagnose or discount cancer were requested by GPs under direct access arrangements.

The Mandate for the NHS for 2014-15 sets out an ambition for England to become one of the most successful countries in Europe at preventing premature deaths.

Tackling premature deaths from cancer will contribute to this. A range of work at national and local level is aimed at improving cancer survival. For example, results from the first national “Be Clear on Cancer” lung cancer campaign in 2012 showed that around 700 extra patients were diagnosed with lung cancer compared to the previous year. Approximately 400 of these patients had their lung cancer diagnosed at an early stage, with around 300 more patients having surgery, giving them a better chance of survival.

Work continues on extending and expanding the bowel, breast and cervical cancer screening programmes, and helping GPs to assess patients more effectively. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence is in the process of updating the ‘Referral Guidelines for Suspected Cancer' (2005) to ensure that it reflects latest evidence and can continue to support GPs to identify patients with symptoms of suspected cancer and urgently refer them as appropriate.