Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that the backlog in cancer care is tackled consistently across the country.

Local systems, drawing on advice and analysis from their Cancer Alliance, will ensure that there is sufficient local diagnostic and treatment capacity in place to meet cancer care needs consistently across England. Cancer patients will benefit from the additional £1 billion announced within Spending Review 2020 to tackle the elective backlog. The priorities set out in NHS England’s Operational Planning Guidance 2021/22 for recovering cancer services focuses on reducing the number of people waiting for more than 62 days to pre-pandemic levels.

Cancer diagnosis and treatment has remained a priority throughout the pandemic, with 2.26 million general practitioner urgent cancer referrals and over 570,000 people treated for cancer between March 2020 and March 2021.