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 help shorten the diagnostic pathway for ovarian cancer.

NHS England does not hold comprehensive national data on cancers diagnosed through non-specific symptom (NSS) pathways since their roll out began. The data set records the number of gynaecological cancers diagnosed through NSS pathways but does not specify how many of these were ovarian cancer cases specifically. In the latest evaluation report on the programme, covering data until January 2024, there were 55 patients diagnosed with gynaecological cancers.

NHS England runs Help Us Help You campaigns to increase knowledge of cancer symptoms and address barriers to acting on them, to encourage people to come forward as soon as possible to see their general practitioner (GP).

NHS England and other National Health Service organisations, nationally and locally, also publish information on the signs and symptoms of many different types of cancer, including ovarian cancer. This information can be found on the NHS website, in an online only format.

It is a priority for the Government to support the NHS to diagnose cancer, including ovarian cancer, as quickly as possible, to treat it faster, and improve outcomes. This is supported by NHS England’s key ambition on cancer to meet the Faster Diagnosis Standard, which sets a target of 28 days from urgent referral by a GP or screening programme to patients being told that they have cancer, or that cancer is ruled out.

The recently announced National Cancer Plan will have patients at its heart and will cover the entirety of the cancer pathway, from referral and diagnosis to treatment and aftercare. This will include improving levels of early diagnosis across England.