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 effect of covid-19 on the cancer treatment backlog; and what estimate he has made of the number of people waiting for (a) cancer treatment, (b) cancer screening, (c) diagnosis and (d) out patients cancer appointments in the latest period for which figures are available.

NHS England is committed to monitoring cancer waiting times on a provider level and publishes monthly statistics on cancer waiting times and treatments. These can be found at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/cancer-waiting-times/

Restoring full operation of all cancer services is a key commitment of the COVID-19 response, as set out in NHS England’s letters dated 10 June and 31 July 2020 at the following links:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/publication/second-phase-of-nhs-response-to-covid-19-for-cancer-services/

https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/wp-content/uploads/sites/52/2020/07/20200731-Phase-3-letter-final-1.pdf

In July 2020, 95.1% of patients with a decision to treat a first treatment of cancer received treatment within 31 days.