Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to reduce waiting times for patients who have been diagnosed with cancer and are waiting for radiotherapy treatment.

Since 2016, there has been significant investment in radiotherapy equipment so that every radiotherapy provider had access to modern, cutting-edge radiotherapy equipment, enabling the rollout of new techniques like stereotactic ablative radiotherapy. The total central investment made between 2016 and 2021 was £162 million and enabled the replacement or upgrade of approximately 100 radiotherapy treatment machines, equal to around a third of all radiotherapy treatment machines. This is investment on top of that committed by National Health Service trusts, either from their own capital budgets or via donations.

Since April 2022, the responsibility for investing in new radiotherapy machines has sat with local systems. This is supported by the 2021 Spending Review, which set aside £12 billion in operational capital for the NHS from 2022 to 2025.

The Government worked with NHS England to publish the delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlogs in elective care in February 2022, and plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to help drive up and protect elective activity, including cancer treatments like radiotherapy. This will further be supported by the additional £3.3 billion of funding in each of the next two years announced at the Autumn Statement to support the NHS.