Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

What steps he is taking to tackle the cancer care and treatment backlog.

Cancer is a priority. As well as a £325 million investment in diagnostic machines, we have provided an additional £1 billion to the National Health Service to tackle the elective backlog,and ensure there is sufficient capacity in place to diagnose and treat the additional people coming into the system. To encourage patients to come forward to their general practitioner if they have symptoms, we launched the successful ‘Help us Help you’ campaign. NHS England also recently published Priorities and Operational Planning Guidance, highlighting that cancer recovery remains a priority for the NHS as a whole. Systems should meet the increased level of referrals and treatment required to address the shortfall in number of first treatments by March 2022.