Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of the average time it takes for a child under the age of 18 diagnosed with cancer to start treatment.

We have not made a specific assessment; the Department is taking steps to reduce cancer treatment waiting times across England, including the time between an urgent general practitioner referral and the commencement of treatment. Increasing the diagnosis and treatment referrals for cancers in young people, whilst reducing waiting times, is a priority for the Government. Although survival has more than doubled since the 1970s in the United Kingdom, there is more to be done to improve childhood cancer outcomes, including reducing waiting times between diagnosis and treatment.

The Government is working jointly with NHS England on implementing the delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlogs in elective care and plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to help drive up and protect elective activity, including cancer diagnosis and treatment activity.

In the 2023/24 Operational Planning Guidance, NHS England announced it is providing over £390 million in cancer service development funding to Cancer Alliances in each of the next two years to support delivery of the strategy and the operational priorities for cancer which includes increasing and prioritising diagnostic and treatment capacity for cancer.

In addition, the National Health Service now offers all children and young people with cancer whole genome sequencing to enable more comprehensive and precise diagnosis, and access to more personalised treatments.