Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department has taken to improve data collection for metastatic breast cancer ahead of the audit of metastatic breast cancer announced by NHS England in May 2021.

The National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service (NCRAS) records all primary cancer diagnoses in England. NCRAS supports the direct reporting of cancer recurrence data by all National Health Service hospital trusts, as part of the Cancer Outcomes and Services Dataset (COSD). Recurrence data collection is also mandated as part of the cancer waiting times standards.

NCRAS has made changes to COSD in Version 9 for data collected from April 2020 onwards to enable more detail to be recorded on whether a secondary cancer is a progression, recurrence or transformation. Version 9 has been designed to make recording more specific and hence improve completeness. NCRAS works directly with NHS trusts and the National Audit of Breast Cancer in Older People to encourage submission of data. The NCRAS Data Liaison team works closely with cancer service managers at hospital trusts to determine sources of data which can be used to complete the COSD data items and also with software suppliers of cancer management systems to ensure that data items can be recorded. Compliance with data standards is monitored by clinical commissioning groups.