Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what progress he has made towards meeting the commitment in the Government's 2010 cancer strategy of saving an additional 5,000 lives from cancer each year.

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. NHS England is continuing to monitor the progress of the National Health Service in reducing mortality from cancer in line with the NHS Outcomes Framework, and from 2014-15 there will be a range of new NHS Outcomes Framework indicators on stage of diagnosis which will provide a good proxy measure in future on progress in delivering earlier stage of diagnosis of cancer.

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.