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 developing a specific action plan for (a) cancers of the (i) brain, (ii) liver, (iii) lung, (iv) stomach, (v) oesophagus and (vi) pancreas and (b) other less survivable cancers.

The Government has not made an assessment of the potential merits of an action plan for less survivable cancers individually or as a group, or had specific discussions with international counterparts on their approach to less survivable cancers.

Lord Darzi’s report has set out the scale of the challenges we face in fixing the National Health Service, and the need to improve cancer waiting time performance and cancer survival. The report will inform the Government’s ten-year plan to reform the NHS, including further detail on how we will improve outcomes for cancer, including less survivable cancers.