Asked by: Cameron Thomas (Liberal Democrat - Tewkesbury)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he will take in the forthcoming National Cancer Plan to improve diagnosis times for myeloma.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
It is a priority for the Government to support the National Health Service to diagnose cancer, including blood cancers, as early and quickly as possible, and to treat it faster, to improve outcomes.
To tackle the late diagnoses of blood cancers, the NHS is implementing non-specific symptom pathways for patients who present with symptoms such as weight loss and fatigue, which do not clearly align to a tumour type. We will get the NHS diagnosing blood cancers earlier and treating them faster, and we will support the NHS to increase capacity to meet the demand for diagnostic services through investment, including for magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography scanners.
The National Cancer Plan will have patients at its heart and will cover the entirety of the cancer pathway, from referral and diagnosis to treatment and ongoing care, as well as prevention, and research and innovation. It will seek to improve every aspect of cancer care to better the experience and outcomes for people with cancer. Our goal is to reduce the number of lives lost to cancer over the next 10 years. This will benefit all cancer patients, including leukaemia and myeloma patients.
Asked by: Liz Jarvis (Liberal Democrat - Eastleigh)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to reduce delays in cancer diagnosis, specifically for blood cancers such as leukaemia.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
It is a priority for the Government to support the National Health Service to diagnose cancer, including blood cancers, as early and quickly as possible, and to treat it faster, to improve outcomes.
To tackle the late diagnoses of blood cancers, the NHS is implementing non-specific symptom pathways for patients who present with symptoms such as weight loss and fatigue, which do not clearly align to a tumour type. We will get the NHS diagnosing blood cancers earlier and treating them faster, and we will support the NHS to increase capacity to meet the demand for diagnostic services through investment, including for magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography scanners.
The National Cancer Plan will have patients at its heart and will cover the entirety of the cancer pathway, from referral and diagnosis to treatment and ongoing care, as well as prevention, and research and innovation. It will seek to improve every aspect of cancer care to better the experience and outcomes for people with cancer. Our goal is to reduce the number of lives lost to cancer over the next 10 years. This will benefit all cancer patients, including leukaemia and myeloma patients.
Asked by: Lee Dillon (Liberal Democrat - Newbury)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he is taking steps to ensure that cancer patients in Newbury are treated within 62 days.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We have now exceeded our pledge to deliver an extra two million appointments across elective, diagnostic, and cancer care, having now delivered over five million more appointments as the first step to ensuring earlier and faster access to treatment.
Between November 2024 to October 2025, approximately 110,000 more patients were diagnosed or had cancer ruled out within 28 days compared to the previous 12 months. This supports the achievement of the 62-day treatment standard, as faster diagnosis means that patients can begin treatment sooner.
The latest available data shows that the 62-day treatment standard for the NHS Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West Integrated Care Board has improved by 3.5% between October 2024 and October 2025.
However, we recognise that there is more to do, including for patients in Newbury.
To ensure that the most advanced treatment is available to the patients who need it, and so that patients can be treated sooner, the Government has also invested £70 million of central funding to replace outdated radiotherapy machines, including one at the Royal Berkshire Hospital.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what guidance his Department issues to GP practices in the Buckingham and Bletchley constituency on early detection of prostate cancer.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We are committed to ensuring that general practitioners (GPs) have the right training and systems to identify cancer symptoms. Use of specific clinical decision support tools are agreed at a local level. This will benefit cancer patients across England, including in Buckingham and Bletchley. GPs are responsible for ensuring their own clinical knowledge remains up-to-date and for identifying learning needs as part of their continuing professional development.
The Department is taking cancer detection seriously, including in GPs. The Government has recently launched Jess’s Rule, a patient safety initiative that introduces clinical guidance to support clinicians in taking a “fresh eyes” approach in GPs. It asks GPs to think again if, after three appointments, they have been unable to diagnose a patient, or their symptoms have escalated. This will benefit all cancer patients, including prostate cancer patients.
Asked by: Ben Coleman (Labour - Chelsea and Fulham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what data his Department holds on the number of children living with DIPG each year; and what resources has the Government allocated to research into the causes of and treatment of DIPG.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department is committed to furthering investment in research into the causes and treatment of brain tumours. Between 2018/19 and 2023/24, the Department’s research delivery arm, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), invested £11.8 million, and United Kingdom Research and Innovation invested £46.8 million in this area.
In September 2024, the NIHR launched a package of support to deliver a step-change in brain cancer research through:
The Department does not hold specific data on the number of children living with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) each year. The National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) collects diagnosis, treatment and outcome data on cancer patients in England. The most recent published data on registrations of cancer including cancer incidence and mortality in the Accredited Official Statistics on Cancer Registrations covering 2023 is available at the following link:
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/cancer-registration-statistics
DIPG is not currently one of the cancer groups routinely published against, however work will be undertaken by the NDRS to understand whether there are any improvements needed in registration to accurately identify DIPG moving forwards.
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 assessment he has made of the potential impact of levels of access to PSMA PET-CT imaging on regional and ethnic inequalities in prostate cancer diagnosis and outcomes.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department recognises that access to PSMA PET-CT imaging varies across England and that this may exacerbate existing disparities.
NHS England has introduced a commissioning policy for PSMA PET-CT imaging for patients with high-risk or recurrent prostate cancer, and work is underway to expand capacity and improve resilience in diagnostic services
Tackling health inequalities remains a core priority. Through the Core20PLUS5 framework, NHS England is working to reduce disparities in cancer outcomes. The forthcoming National Cancer Plan will set out further actions to improve early diagnosis and equitable access to cancer services across England.
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 assessment he has been made of the adequacy of national production capacity for PSMA radiotracers in the context of projected clinical demand for prostate cancer diagnosis.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) radiotracers are commissioned for use as part of PET-CT prostate cancer imaging, as set out in the published clinical commissioning policy. Access to PET-CT, as with any healthcare service, is closely monitored.
Asked by: Mims Davies (Conservative - East Grinstead and Uckfield)
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 reduce delays caused by inadequate clinic capacity that prevent urgent breast referrals from meeting the 28 day Faster Diagnosis Standard.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department is supporting the National Health Service to increase capacity to meet the demand for diagnostic services through investment in new magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography scanners. The Government is investing an extra £26 billion in the NHS over two years and is opening up community diagnostic centres at evening and weekends, to help catch cancer earlier, including breast cancer.
To ensure that those with signs and symptoms that may indicate breast cancer have cancer diagnosed or ruled out as quickly as possible, NHS England has published guidance for local systems on implementing a timed breast cancer diagnostic pathway. The guidance sets out how diagnosis within 28-days can be achieved for the suspected breast cancer pathway in line with Faster Diagnosis Standard.
Asked by: Wendy Chamberlain (Liberal Democrat - North East Fife)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department will commit to publishing regular data on leukaemia diagnosis delays and outcomes.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Disease Registration Service collects information on how many people in England are diagnosed with or treated for cancer. Blood cancer is included as a distinct category, labelled haematological neoplasms, with further information avaiable at the following link:
https://nhsd-ndrs.shinyapps.io/incidence_and_mortality/
This creates a clinically rich data resource that is used to measure diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes for patients diagnosed with cancer.
The 28-day faster diagnosis standard is a performance standard that aims to have a patient diagnosed with or have cancer ruled out within 28-days from referral. This performance metric monitors diagnostic performance and delays in diagnosis across cancer types, including leukaemia. It is published monthly and can be found at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/cancer-waiting-times/
Data is collected on cancer survival, with the most recent dataset being published in February 2023, which provides survival data from 2016 to 2020, followed up to 2021. The next publication will be released soon and will provide data on cancer survival diagnosed from 2018 to 2022 followed up to 2023. The survival datasets can be found at the following link:
Asked by: Steve Yemm (Labour - Mansfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will meet with young people with cancer supported by Teenage Cancer Trust ahead of the publication of the National Cancer Plan.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department is committed to ensuring the unique needs of young people with cancer are carefully considered as part of the National Cancer Plan, due for publication in the coming weeks. Since its launch on 4 February 2025, the Children and Young People (CYP) Cancer Taskforce has been working to identify tangible ways to improve outcomes and experiences for children and young people with cancer. The taskforce will explore opportunities for improvement across detection and diagnosis, genomic testing and treatment, research and innovation, and patient experience.
The Government is committed to including the voices of young cancer patients in the work of the taskforce and the National Cancer Plan. That’s why the Government assembled a Patient Experience Panel, made up of young people with lived experience of cancer and their families, which will feed directly into the work of the taskforce.
The Government is also aware of the unique challenges that teenagers with cancer face, often falling in between paediatric and adult care. The CYP Cancer Taskforce has a dedicated charity sub-group which has engaged with the Teenage Cancer Trust, alongside other charitable groups, to ensure these challenges are addressed in the National Cancer Plan. I would like to thank the Teenage Cancer Trust, other charities, and the CYP Cancer Taskforce for their valuable input into the plan.