Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will set out the types of health impacts of poor (a) ambient and (b) indoor air quality by (i) geography and (ii) socioeconomic groups.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Ambient and indoor air pollution are harmful to health in the United Kingdom. Long-term exposure to air pollution, over years or lifetimes, reduces life expectancy, mainly due to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, dementia and lung cancer. Short-term exposure, over hours or days, to elevated levels of air pollution can also cause a range of health impacts, including effects on lung function, exacerbation of asthma, increases in respiratory and cardiovascular hospital admissions, and mortality. Some groups may be more affected by air pollution exposure due to their location or socioeconomic background, but the types of health impacts from exposure to poor air quality in indoor and ambient settings remains similar. A combination of high ambient air pollution levels and substandard housing in income-deprived areas, pre-existing health issues, and lifestyle factors contribute to a disproportionate burden of air-pollution-related ill health among more deprived groups.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 28 December 2025 to Question 100476 on Brain: Tumours, what plans the National Institute for Health and Care Research has to undertake horizon scanning of the pharmaceutical and biotech project pipelines to identify potential candidates suitable for developing vaccines for brain tumours in conjunction with the NHS Cancer Vaccine Launch Pad.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department invests over £1.6 billion per year in research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). Cancer is a major area of NIHR spending at £141.6 million in 2024/25, reflecting its high priority.
The NIHR is continuing to invest in brain tumour research. For example, in December 2025, the NIHR announced the pioneering Brain Tumour Research Consortium to accelerate research into new brain tumour treatments. The NIHR invested an initial £13.7 million in the consortium with a further £11.7 million announced in January 2026. The world-leading consortium aims to transform outcomes for adults and children and their families who are living with brain tumours, ultimately reducing lives lost to cancer.
The NIHR supports cancer vaccine innovation through a coordinated national model, combining the NHS Cancer Vaccine Launch Pad’s clinical prioritisation with the Vaccine Innovation Pathway and the NIHR Industry Hub’s horizon scanning, feasibility, and delivery capability. The NIHR Industry Hub undertakes horizon scanning of pharmaceutical and biotechnology pipelines, as part of its national industry engagement and delivery role, to identify emerging cancer vaccine and immune-therapy platforms, including those with potential relevance to hard-to-treat cancers such as brain tumours. Promising candidates are supported through a single national operating model delivered via the NIHR Industry Hub, which provides a coordinated entry point for industry, structured feasibility assessment, and delivery assurance. Cancer vaccine trials continue to be prioritised and delivered in partnership with the NHS Cancer Vaccine Launch Pad, with accelerated delivery capability provided through the Vaccine Innovation Pathway. Together, this integrated approach ensures that as the science matures, the United Kingdom is able to identify, assess, and rapidly progress suitable cancer vaccine candidates into high-quality clinical trials within the NHS.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the current average waiting times are for patients to begin radiotherapy treatment following referral, broken down by region and cancer type.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The published data on cancer waiting times in England does not include average waiting times for patients to begin treatment, and the Department does not publish radiotherapy data broken down by tumour type, as we present tumour type and treatment modality breakdowns separately.
However, the Department does publish the 31-day standard performance data for radiotherapy. Whilst the publication does not directly present this data at a regional level, the published commissioner-level data can be aggregated using publicly available mapping tables.
The following table shows 31-day standard performance data for radiotherapy at the regional and national levels, for the latest month of data available at the time of production, November 2025:
Region name | Total activity | Within standard activity | Breaches | Performance |
East of England | 1,266 | 1,027 | 239 | 81.1% |
London | 1,204 | 1,129 | 75 | 93.8% |
Midlands | 2,121 | 1,918 | 203 | 90.4% |
North East and Yorkshire | 1,867 | 1,562 | 305 | 83.7% |
North West | 1,486 | 1,460 | 26 | 98.3% |
South East | 1,801 | 1,577 | 224 | 87.6% |
South West | 1,318 | 1,235 | 83 | 93.7% |
Unknown or national commissioning hub | 109 | 109 | - | 100.0% |
National | 11,172 | 10,017 | 1,155 | 89.7% |
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how the National Cancer Plan will support people with secondary breast cancer.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Cancer Plan, published 4 February 2026, will transform outcomes for people with secondary breast cancer.
The National Health Service is piloting the use of self-referral breast cancer pathways to streamline diagnostic pathways using the NHS App and NHS 111 online service. This is in addition to the Government’s commitment for the NHS to deliver 9.5 million additional tests by 2029 through a £2.3 billion investment in diagnostics. We are also ensuring as many community diagnostic centres as possible are fully operational and open 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
To improve the diagnosis of breast cancer, the NHS will harness 'circulating tumour DNA' tests for breast cancer, which can pick up relapse months earlier. This will accelerate clinical decisions and allow patients to start the most effective treatment faster.
The NHS will monitor the emerging evidence from the BRAID trial, which aims to determine whether additional imaging with one of several types of scans, is helpful in diagnosing breast cancer in women with dense breast tissue. This will target screening programmes at women who are at greater risk of cancer.
The NHS is also improving the experience of those with a cancer diagnosis. Every patient diagnosed with cancer will be supported through a full neighbourhood-level personalised care package, covering mental and physical health as well as any practical or financial concerns. For people with secondary breast cancer, this will be a step forward in building care around them, their needs, their lives, and their families.
We will harness data, as we begin counting metastatic disease, starting with breast cancer, so that people living with incurable cancer are properly recognised and better supported.
Through these National Cancer Plan actions, we will ensure that people with secondary breast cancer have faster diagnoses and treatment, access to the latest treatments and technology, and high-quality support throughout their journey, while we work to drive up this country’s cancer survival rates.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to increase the (a) accessibility and (b) availability of functional MRI scans.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans can be taken on standard clinical MRI machines. However, whilst functional MRI requires specialised software to detect blood flow changes, the blood-oxygen-level-dependent signal, and sometimes extra equipment for stimuli, for instance goggles, it uses the same scanner hardware as structural MRI.
We are committed to transforming diagnostic services and will support the National Health Service to increase diagnostic capacity to meet the demand for diagnostic services, including MRI scanners.
The 2025 Spending Review confirmed over £6 billion of additional capital investment over five years across new diagnostic, elective, and urgent care capacity. This includes £600 million in capital funding for diagnostics in 2025/26 to support delivery of the NHS performance standards. This funding will deliver replacement of the oldest MRI scanners in community diagnostic centres and acute hospital settings, as well as delivering MRI acceleration software. Business cases for the locations of these are being considered for approval.
Capital investment will be targeted to locations where it will enable the additional activity required to deliver the return to referral to treatment and cancer constitutional standards promised, as well as considering local levels of deprivation so that investment supports efforts to reduce health inequalities.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to increase access to healthcare services in rural areas.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government’s 10-Year Health Plan has set out a long-term vision to reform the National Health Service and make it fit for the future. Addressing healthcare inequity is a core focus of the 10-Year Health Plan, to ensure the NHS is there for anyone who needs it whenever they need it.
This includes ending the postcode lottery for cancer patients through introducing new training places targeted at trusts with the biggest workforce gaps, prioritising rural and coastal areas.
There are also a range of adjustments made to integrated care board funding allocations that account for the fact that the costs of providing health care may vary between rural and urban areas. These adjustments specifically support remote or sparsely populated areas.
Asked by: Mike Martin (Liberal Democrat - Tunbridge Wells)
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 potential impact on patients with relapsed or refractory Mantle Cell Lymphoma of NICE’s draft decision not to recommend brexucabtagene autoleucel (Tecartus) for NHS use; and whether he plans to review the CAR‑T delivery tariff to ensure continued access to treatments.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is currently re-evaluating brexucabtagene autoleucel to determine whether it can be recommended for routine National Health Service funding following a period of managed access through the Cancer Drugs Fund. NICE’s draft guidance, published in December, does not recommend it as a clinically and cost-effective use of NHS resources. The Government recognises that the potential withdrawal of brexucabtagene autoleucel as a treatment for future patients with mantle cell lymphoma will be concerning for patients and their families, but it is right that these decisions are taken independently and on the basis of the available evidence. In line with an arrangement between NHS England and the company, if NICE’s final guidance does not recommend use, patients who started treatment during the managed access period can continue their treatment.
The CAR-T delivery tariff reflects the costs which the NHS incurs for delivering CAR-T therapy. The tariff was updated for the start of the 2024/25 financial year following a planned costing review involving all CAR-T providers in England. This enabled the tariff to be updated with the benefit of the significant delivery experience that can be drawn on having first routinely introduced CAR-T in the NHS in 2023. Other than considering an appropriate inflationary uplift on an annual basis, in line with usual practice, there are no plans to further review the tariff at this time. Other CAR-T therapies have been recommended for routine NHS adoption in England by NICE based on an assessment of clinical and cost effectiveness that reflects the existing CAR-T delivery tariff, most recently obecabtagene autoleucel for acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.
Asked by: Lord Moylan (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what treatments exist for those mantle cell lymphoma patients unable to access allogeneic stem cell transplants due to (1) ethnicity, (2) age, and (3) ethnicity and age.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
A number of National Health Service treatment options are available for patients with mantle cell lymphoma, and may include:
- chemotherapy plus rituximab;
- autologous stem cell transplant;
- ibrutinib;
- zanubrutinib;
- brexucabtagene autoleucel, a type of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy; and/or
- supportive care.
None of these treatments are precluded on the basis of ethnicity, age, or a combination of the two, but available options will be dependent on individual clinical circumstances and any prior treatment or treatments received.
Potential treatment options are also currently being appraised by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and therefore could be made available within England in the future, subject to positive recommendations on NHS adoption being reached. These are: Acalabrutinib with bendamustine and rituximab; and Ibrutinib with R-CHOP.
Asked by: Lord Freyberg (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what proportion of health technology assessments submitted to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence in the past five years have related to cancer; and what assessment they have made of the importance of up-to-date national registry data to those evaluations.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
In the financial years 2021/22 to 2025/26, to date, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has made 429 technology appraisal recommendations. Of these appraisals, 218 relate to cancer medicines. The Department has not made any assessment of the importance of an up-to-date national registry on those evaluations. NICE works with companies and wider stakeholders throughout the appraisal process to ensure that its appraisals take into account the available evidence.
Asked by: Lord Freyberg (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what is the current average time from test request to result for tests provided by NHS England's genomic medicine laboratories; and what assessment they have made of the impact of those turnaround times on patient access to appropriate treatment for (1) SOD1 testing in motor neurone disease, (2) germline BRCA1/2 testing in hereditary female cancers, and (3) homologous recombination deficiency testing in breast cancer and ovarian cancer.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
In December 2025, the average turnaround time for genomic tests processed through the NHS Genomic Laboratory Hubs were 42 days for the test code which includes SOD1 analysis for motor neuron disease, as well as other clinical indications, 37 to 42 days for germline BRCA1/2 testing, and 22 days for homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) testing for ovarian carcinomas. These are within the national targets of 42 days for the test code which includes SOD1 analysis for motor neuron disease and BRCA1/2 and 28 days for HRD, supporting timely clinical decision‑making. As genomic results directly inform treatment choices for motor neurone disease, hereditary female cancers, and ovarian carcinoma, maintaining these turnaround times is essential to ensuring patients can access appropriate therapies without delay.