Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 29 March 2018 to Question 134294 on Haematological Cancer, when he plans for the evaluation of the rapid diagnostic centres to be published; and he plans for that evaluation to inform the national roll-out of the centres as proposed in the NHS Long-Term Plan.

Ten multi-disciplinary diagnostic centres are being piloted through the Accelerate, Co-ordinate, Evaluate (ACE) partnership between Cancer Research UK, Macmillan Cancer Support and NHS England. This pilot programme will end in March 2019. Early findings from those sites informed the plans for roll out of the Rapid Diagnostic Centres as part of the NHS Long Term Plan.

During 2019/20, the ACE Programme will share further evaluation from the pilot centres. The findings will continue to inform plans for expansion of the Rapid Diagnostic Centres, alongside work being led by Cancer Alliances to improve early diagnosis.