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 improve the detection of cancer in its early stages.

The NHS Long Term Plan set out the commitment to diagnose 75% of cancers being at stage 1 or 2 by 2028.

As recommended by the UK National Screening Committee and the independent Cancer Taskforce, we are modernising our world-renowned cancer screening programmes by introducing Faecal Immunochemical Testing into the NHS Bowel Cancer Screening Programme as soon as possible and human papillomavirus as the primary test in the NHS Cervical Screening Programme by 2020.

NHS England is establishing Rapid Diagnostic Centres across the country to upgrade and bring together the latest diagnostic equipment and expertise. The centres build on the 10 models piloted through the Accelerate, Coordinate and Evaluate programme, which have focussed on diagnosing cancers where patients often present with non-specific symptoms and may go to their general practitioner many times before being sent for appropriate tests.