Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate his Department has made of how many patients will receive proton beam therapy at (a) The Christie NHS Foundation Trust and (b) University College London Hospitals in the first year the machines become operational.

NHS England and University College London Hospital (UCLH) are currently working with contractors to open the Proton Beam Therapy (PBT) centre as soon as possible following the COVID-19 pandemic. It is anticipated that the first patient treatment will be in 2021.

Apart from the current impact of COVID-19, the PBT service at UCLH has been delayed historically due to the complexity of the build on a constrained inner London site and, more recently due to water ingress, as reported to the National PBT Programme Board, the Department and the Infrastructure and Projects Authority. These historic issues have been resolved.