Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

What steps he is taking to tackle backlogs in cancer diagnosis, treatment, and care.

Cancer is a priority. As well as a £325 million investment in National Health Service diagnostic machines, with plans to increase endoscopy and computerised tomography capacity, we have provided an additional £1 billion to the NHS to tackle the elective backlog.

This will ensure there is sufficient capacity in place to diagnose and treat the additional people coming into the system and reduce the number of people waiting over 62 days on cancer pathways with a focus for those who have had their care delayed.

To encourage patients to come forward to their general practitioner (GP) if they have worrying symptoms we launched the successful ‘Help us Help you’ campaign, with latest March 2021 data showing urgent GP cancer referrals to be 190% higher than in April 2020.