Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans his Department has to improve survival rates for bowel cancer.

We will get the National Health Service diagnosing cancer earlier and treating it faster, so more patients survive, including those with bowel cancer. As the first step to ensure faster diagnosis and treatment, the NHS is delivering an extra 40,000 operations, scans, and appointments each week.

Our reforms to cancer care will see more than 100,000 people, including those with bowel cancer, getting diagnosed faster, and thousands more starting treatment within two months. We have already hit our target of delivering two million extra operations, scans, and appointments seven months early.

The National Cancer Plan will include further details on how we will improve outcomes for cancer patients, including those with lower gastrointestinal cancers cancers, as well as speeding up diagnosis and treatment, ensuring patients have access to the latest treatments and technology, and ultimately bringing this country’s cancer survival rates back up to the standards of the best in the world.