Cancer
(asked on 23rd June 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what data his Department holds on late stage cancer diagnoses, by ethnic group.
The National Disease Registration Service in NHS England, as the national cancer registry, collects and analyses diagnosis and treatment data on cancer patients in England. Further information on the National Disease Registration Service is available at the following link:
The following estimates are taken from the data used in Accredited Official Statistics on Cancer Registration for 2022, the most recent diagnosis year available, with further information available at the following link:
The estimates apply the 2021 census ethnic groups for England and Wales, namely:
- Asian or Asian British;
- black, black British, Caribbean, or African;
- mixed or multiple ethnic groups;
- white; and
- other ethnic group
Further information on the ethnic groups used is available at the following link:
Where an ethnicity is not stated on the data sources that are used to compile the cancer registration statistics, these are given the label “Unknown (not stated)”.
The proportions given are on a complete case basis, which compares known stage at diagnosis, and stageable diagnoses for which insufficient data has been reported to the National Disease Registration Service are not included. The definition of early and late stage diagnoses are those used in the NHS Long Term Plan ambitions for cancer, specifically that diagnoses at stages 1 and 2 are considered to be early, and diagnoses at stages 3 and 4 are considered to be late. Further information on the NHS Long Term Plan ambitions for cancer is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/cancer/strategy/
The following table shows the number and proportion of cancers diagnosed early and late for all stageable diagnoses combined, by ethnic group, in 2022, in England:
Ethnic group | Number of early stage diagnoses | Proportion of early stage diagnoses | Number of early stage diagnoses | Proportion of late stage diagnoses |
Asian or Asian British | 4,126 | 57% | 3,122 | 43% |
Black, Black British, Caribbean, or African | 3,499 | 57% | 2,612 | 43% |
Mixed or multiple ethnic groups | 804 | 58% | 571 | 42% |
White | 112,391 | 55% | 93,085 | 45% |
Other ethnic group | 2,035 | 55% | 1,654 | 45% |
Unknown (not stated) | 11,697 | 58% | 8,345 | 42% |
All ethnicities combined | 134,552 | 55% | 109,389 | 45% |
Not every cancer is stageable, and some types of cancer do not have a staging system, so the tabulations above are for a subset of the reported total number of diagnoses of cancer.