Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to reduce the length of time between diagnosis and the start of radiotherapy treatment.

We will get the National Health Service diagnosing cancer on time, diagnosing it earlier, and treating it faster, and we will improve patients’ experience across the system.

Lord Darzi’s report has set out the scale of the challenges we face in fixing the NHS and the need to improve cancer waiting time performance and cancer survival. In particular, he has highlighted the need to improve the number of patients starting their treatment within 62 days of referral and to increase the number of patients diagnosed at an earlier stage.

Improving 62-day performance and early diagnosis are already key priorities for NHS England. Lord Darzi’s report will inform our ten-year plan to reform the NHS, which include further details on how we will improve cancer diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes.