Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to increase the prognosis rate for cholangiocarcinoma.

The National Health Service is taking crucial steps to improve cancer outcomes for patients across England, including for intrahepatic and extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma.

For stageable cancers, such as cholangiocarcinoma, there is a clear link between early staging and increased survival rates. Many of the actions we are implementing to improve the earlier staging of stageable cancers, such as improving awareness of cancer signs and symptoms, and increasing referral routes and the availability of diagnostics, have a positive impact on patient outcomes.

To help achieve this, we will deliver an extra 40,000 operations, scans, and appointments each week. We are also investing an additional £889 million in general practice (GP) to reinforce the front door of the NHS, bringing the total spend on the GP Contract to £13.2 billion in 2025/26. This is the biggest increase in over a decade.

The National Cancer Plan will include further details on how we will improve outcomes for cancer patients. It will focus on speeding up diagnosis and treatment and ensuring that patients have access to the latest treatments and technology. The overarching goal of the plan is to ultimately bring this country’s cancer survival rates back up to the standards of the best in the world.