Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to increase the survival rate of patients with pancreatic cancer.

Later this year, the Government will begin the roll-out of new Rapid Diagnostic Centres across the country to upgrade and bring together the latest diagnostic equipment and expertise, which focus on diagnosing cancers where patients often present with non-specific symptoms, like pancreatic cancer, and may go to their general practitioner (GP) many times before being sent for tests.

This is part of the NHS Long Term Plan that was published in January 2019. It sets a new ambition that, by 2028, the proportion of cancers diagnosed at stages 1 and 2 will rise from around half now to three-quarters of cancer patients. Achieving this will mean that, from 2028, 55,000 more people each year will survive their cancer for at least five years after diagnosis. We will build on work to raise greater awareness of symptoms of cancer, lower the threshold for referral by GPs, accelerate access to diagnosis and treatment and maximise the number of cancers that we identify through screening. This includes the use of personalised and risk stratified screening and beginning to test the family members of cancer patients where they are at increased risk of cancer.