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 number of diagnoses of lung cancer before it has reached stage 3 or 4.

The NHS Long Term Plan included an ambition that 75% of cancers will be diagnosed at stage 1 and 2 by 2028. The plan sets out a number of key steps to achieve this, including raising greater awareness of symptoms of cancer, accelerating access to diagnosis and treatment and maximising the number of cancers that we identify through screening. Meeting this ambition will also require the National Health Service to harness new technological advances to target at risk patients more effectively; directing our research and innovation effort to the areas where the data tells us we can have the biggest impact; and mobilising the NHS so that we can adopt proven new approaches more quickly.

In February 2019, NHS England announced that Targeted Lung Health Checks will be one of the first projects to roll out following the launch of the NHS Long Term Plan that was published in January 2019. The Targeted Lung Health Check programme will cover 10 initial sites covering 14 clinical commissioning groups until 2023 in areas that have been selected as they have some of the highest rates of lung cancer mortality. People aged 55-74 that have ever smoked will be invited to have a free lung check. Results from these initial sites will form the basis for a wider rollout across the country.