Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to reduce mortality rates for people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

NHS services for pancreatic cancer have been significantly improved in recent years. This includes clearer diagnostic pathways; decision making by specialist multi-disciplinary teams; and the centralisation of pancreas surgery within specialist teams.

However, we know more needs to be done. The Independent Cancer Taskforce’s report, Achieving World-Class Outcomes a Cancer Strategy for England 2015 – 2020, notes that whilst survival to date has improved significantly for some cancers, for other cancers, including pancreatic cancer, it has remained stubbornly low.

An implementation plan, Achieving World-Class Cancer Outcomes: Taking the strategy forward, was published on 12 May 2016 and we hope to see great progress as it is delivered.

We know earlier diagnosis of cancer makes it more likely that patients will receive effective treatments so we have committed funding of up to £300 million a year by 2020 to implement recommendation 24 of the report that by 2020, everyone referred with a suspicion of cancer will receive either a definitive diagnosis or the all-clear within 28 days.

In addition, NHS England has published a service specification for pancreatic cancer which clearly defines what it expects to be in place for providers to offer evidence-based, safe and effective pancreatic cancer services. This service specification has been developed by specialised clinicians, commissioners, expert patients and public health representatives to describe core and developmental service standards.

The full service specification can be found at:

http://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/a02-cncr-panc.pdf

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published updated guideline, Suspected cancer: recognition and referral, in June 2015, to ensure that it reflects latest evidence and can continue to support general practitioners (GPs) to identify patients, including children and young people and urgently refer them as appropriate. NICE noted that 5,000 more lives could be saved each year in England if GPs followed the new guideline, which encourage GPs to think of cancer sooner and lower the referral threshold.