Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of the time taken to access radiotherapy treatment on cancer outcomes; and what steps his Department is taking to ensure patients that need radiotherapy treatment can access it as quickly as possible.

The Government believes that cancer patients are waiting too long for diagnosis and treatment, including radiotherapy treatment. We will get the National Health Service diagnosing cancer earlier and treating it faster. 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.