Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of implementing a dedicated diagnostic pathway for brain tumours.

The Department is working with NHS England to improve diagnostic processes in the National Health Service for all patients with cancer, including those with brain tumours.

To support faster and earlier diagnosis, the Department will address the challenges in diagnostic waiting times, providing the number of computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and other tests that are needed to reduce cancer waits. NHS England is delivering a range of interventions to support general practices in diagnosing brain cancer earlier, for example through the early cancer diagnosis service specification for primary care networks. This specification is designed to support improvements in rates of early cancer diagnosis by requiring primary care networks to review the quality of their general practices’ referrals for suspected cancer and take steps to improve this, where appropriate.

The Department also set out expectations for renewed focus on cancer targets in the Elective Reform plan, published on 6 January 2025. NHS providers have been asked to identify local opportunities in both community diagnostic centres (CDCs) and hospital based diagnostic services to improve performance against the Faster Diagnosis Standard, in order to reduce the number of patients waiting too long for a confirmed diagnosis of cancer. Any new CDC will be expected to include specific capacity for cancer testing as part of its CDC activity plans, enabled either through direct provision or via freeing up acute hospital capacity for more complex cancer tests.

Later this year, the Department will publish a National Cancer Plan, which will have patients at its heart and will cover the entirety of the cancer pathway, including diagnosis. It will seek to improve every aspect of cancer care, to improve the experiences and outcomes for people with cancer, including those with brain cancer.

Given this wider ongoing work, the Department has not made a specific assessment on the merits of implementing a dedicated diagnostics pathway for brain tumours.