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 waiting times for cancer treatment.

The ‘Delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlog of elective care’ sets out how the National Health Service will recover and expand elective services over the next three years, including cancer services. We have allocated more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25, in addition to the £2 billion Elective Recovery Fund and £700 million Targeted Investment Fund already made available in 2021/2022 to increase elective activity. This funding aims to deliver the equivalent of approximately nine million additional checks and procedures and 30% further elective activity by 2024/25 than pre-pandemic levels.

The plan also sets out how NHS England will return the number of people waiting more than 62 days to start treatment following an urgent referral due to suspected cancer to pre-pandemic levels by March 2023. We have established 91 community diagnostic centres (CDCs) to ensure patients receive earlier diagnostic tests, including for cancer. We will deliver up to 160 CDCs which will allow the NHS to provide up to 17 million tests by March 2025, with capacity for a further nine million per year once fully operational.