Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to (a) collect and (b) analyse data on cancer in the over 70s as part of the National Cancer audit.

The NHS England Cancer Programme commissions clinical cancer audits, which provide timely evidence for cancer service providers of where patterns of care in England may vary, increase the consistency of access to treatments, and help stimulate improvements in cancer treatment and outcomes for patients. Rather than a single audit, NHS England commissions ten audits, by tumour type, and are unaware of any intention to commission an audit into those over 70 years old.

For all patients in England, the National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service provides near-real time, comprehensive, quality-assured data covering the entire cancer pathway. The service collects data about all 500,000 patients diagnosed with cancer in England each year, and produces a variety of reports and publications using cancer registration data.