Asked by: Carla Lockhart (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
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 help support research into immunotherapy treatments for (a) pancreatic, (b) brain and (c) other difficult-to-treat cancers; and whether he plans to provide additional funding to clinical trials in this area.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department invests in research through its research delivery arm, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). The NIHR continues to welcome high quality, high impact funding applications for research into any aspect of human health and care, including research into immunotherapy treatments.
The Department is committed to ensuring that all patients, including those with pancreatic, brain, and other difficult-to-treat cancers, have access to cutting-edge clinical trials and innovative, lifesaving treatments. The Department is committed to turbocharging clinical research and delivering better patient care, to make the United Kingdom a world-leading destination for clinical research. We are working to fast-track clinical trials to drive global investment into life sciences, improve health outcomes, and accelerate the development of medicines and therapies of the future, including treatments for cancer.
The Office for Life Sciences’ Cancer Healthcare Goals programme and the Medical Research Council have co-funded and awarded a £9 million grant to the MANIFEST immunotherapy platform. The MANIFEST consortium is led by the Francis Crick Institute and is composed of academia, the National Health Service, and industry partners, with the aim of expanding and advancing UK immunotherapy research and development capabilities, supporting better targeting and improved efficacy of these expensive treatments, and will look to onboard new cancer types and indications as activity progresses.
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 his Department is taking to improve awareness of symptoms of (a) lung and (b) pancreatic cancer.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department is committed to improving symptom awareness of lung cancer and pancreatic cancer, and NHS England is also taking steps to improve awareness.
NHS England runs Help Us Help You campaigns to increase knowledge of cancer symptoms and address barriers to acting on them, to encourage people to come forward as soon as possible to see their general practitioner. The campaigns focus on a range of symptoms as well as encouraging body awareness to help people spot symptoms across a wide range of cancers at an earlier point. NHS England and other National Health Service organisations, nationally and locally, also publish information on the signs and symptoms of many different types of cancer, including lung cancer and pancreatic cancer. This information can be found on the NHS website.
The Department has also committed support to the Less Survivable Cancers Taskforce, which is a group of charities focusing on cancers with poor survival rates. This partnership focuses on raising awareness of less survivable cancers, including lung cancer and pancreatic cancer, so more people understand their symptoms and go to see their general practitioner if they have concerns.
As part of developing the forthcoming National Cancer Plan for England, the Department has been working with members of the Less Survivable Cancers Taskforce to identify how to improve diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes for less survivable cancers, including lung cancer and pancreatic cancer.
Asked by: Clive Jones (Liberal Democrat - Wokingham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to establish a regular bladder cancer audit to (a) reduce data gaps in the reporting of (i) incidence and (ii) staging, (b) capture data on inequalities and (c) provide an evidence base for addressing unwarranted variation in early diagnosis and outcomes for bladder cancer.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The NHS Cancer Programme commissioned the Royal College of Surgeons to deliver six new clinical audits, in primary breast cancer, metastatic breast cancer, ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and kidney cancer, on top of four existing audits in bowel, lung, oesophago-gastric, and prostate cancer. These audits were chosen because analysts considered that they are the cancers which audits would have the most potential to reduce unwarranted variation in treatment and outcomes. For these reasons, there are no plans to undertake a clinical audit for bladder cancer.
The National Cancer Plan will include further details on how we will improve outcomes for cancer patients, including those with bladder cancer, as well as speeding up diagnosis and treatment, ensuring patients have access to the latest treatments and technology, and ultimately bringing this country’s cancer survival rates back up to the standards of the best in the world.
Asked by: Carla Lockhart (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of artificial intelligence on early diagnosis of (a) lung, (b) pancreatic and (c) other cancers.
Answered by Feryal Clark - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology invests in cancer research via UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), and the Department of Health and Social Care via the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). UKRI and NIHR support research which explores the impact of AI on cancer diagnosis, including the £21 million AI Diagnostic Fund (using AI for faster lung cancer diagnosis). AI presents significant opportunities for improving outcomes and diagnosis for cancer patients and driving faster triage of patients with suspected symptoms. Evaluations of the impact of AI on cancer diagnosis are ongoing.
Asked by: Dan Norris (Independent - North East Somerset and Hanham)
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 help improve survival rates for (a) pancreatic cancer and (b) other cancers in North East Somerset and Hanham constituency.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Improving survival rates for all cancers, including pancreatic cancer, is a priority for the Government. As the first step to ensuring faster diagnosis and treatment, we have delivered an extra 40,000 operations, scans, and appointments each week.
NHS England is providing a route into pancreatic cancer surveillance for those at high-risk to identify lesions before they develop into cancer. NHS England is additionally creating pathways to support faster referral routes for people with non-specific symptoms and is increasing direct access for general practitioners to diagnostic tests.
The National Cancer Plan will include further details on how we will improve outcomes for all cancer patients across the country, including North East Somerset and Hanham, as well as speeding up diagnosis and treatment. It will aim to ensure that patients have access to the latest treatments and technology, and ultimately bring this country’s cancer survival rates, including for those with pancreatic cancer.
Asked by: Sarah Gibson (Liberal Democrat - Chippenham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the Orphan Drug Regulations in stimulating innovation in treatments for pancreatic cancer.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Human Medicines Regulations include specific incentives to support orphan medicines, designed to encourage the development of medicines for rare diseases. The regulations enable the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to grant orphan designation to a medicine intended for the prevention, diagnosis, or treatment of a rare condition. This orphan designation provides the product with a period of market exclusivity for the specified condition, preventing similar competitor medicines from entering the market during this time. Pancreatic cancer can be considered as falling under the definition of the rare diseases.
The MHRA further supports developers of orphan medicines by offering a full or partial refund of the marketing authorisation fee following a positive orphan designation. There is evidence that the regulations for orphan medicines do support development, with around 150 medicines successfully developed and authorised for the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of rare diseases and given a United Kingdom orphan designation.
The MHRA will continue to review its approach to orphan medicines and, where necessary, propose updates to the criteria to further encourage research into rare diseases and improve patient outcomes.
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, whether he plans to increase funding for the research and development of diagnostic (a) tests and (b) tools to help support GPs to (i) diagnose and (ii) detect less survivable cancers (A) earlier and (B) faster.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Research is crucial in tackling cancer, which is why the Department invests over £1.6 billion per year in health research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). NIHR research expenditure for all cancers was £133 million in 2023/24, reflecting its high priority.
The level of funding for research and development generally depends on funding applications received. The NIHR continues to welcome high quality, high impact funding applications for research into any aspect of human health and care, including less survivable cancers.
In September 2024, the NIHR awarded £2.4 million to develop an artificial intelligence tool to support general practitioners (GPs) to identify suspected cancer faster and more effectively. It will use lung and pancreatic cancers as the first test cases. The NIHR also funded recently completed, January 2025, research into understanding how GPs use existing national guidance for urgent suspected cancer referral in primary care, with the findings expected to be published later this year.
It is a priority for the Government to support the National Health Service to diagnose cancer earlier and to treat it faster, to improve outcomes for all patients across England. We are improving public awareness of cancer signs and symptoms, streamlining referral routes, and increasing the availability of diagnostic capacity through the roll-out of more community diagnostic centres.
We are also investing an additional £889 million in GPs to reinforce the front door of the NHS, bringing total spend on the GP Contract to £13.2 billion in 2025/26. This is the biggest increase in over a decade. We are committed to ensuring that GPs have the right training and systems to identify cancer. The National Cancer Plan will include further details on how we will improve outcomes for cancer patients. It will aim to speed up diagnosis and treatment and ensure all patients have access to the latest treatments and technology.
Asked by: Clive Jones (Liberal Democrat - Wokingham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if his Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of an (a) centralised and (b) nationwide case-finding programme to identify people at high risk of (i) developing and (ii) inheriting less survivable cancers.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) has committed to developing a National Inherited Cancer Predisposition Register (NICPR) as part of its 2024 to 2027 strategy, building on the work to establish the National Lynch Registry. The NICPR will launch on 30 June, and will look at a wider range of cancers for which there is an increased inherited risk, including for less survivable cancers. It will identify high-risk individuals who are eligible for targeted screening and surveillance, and will act as an electronic referral route into national screening programmes where these exist, for instance Lynch syndrome and bowel screening.
The NICPR is also a key commitment in the Rare Disease Action Plan for England, with NDRS in NHS England as the lead delivery partner, further highlighting its relevance to improving care for people with rare inherited cancer risk.
NHS England is also working on case-finding approaches for less survivable cancers, where the evidence suggests this is appropriate. It is currently developing a public-facing Family History Checker, which enables people and their families affected by pancreatic cancer to self-assess if they may inherit risk. Individuals identified as being at risk are referred directly to the European Registry of Hereditary Pancreatic Diseases research trial, which aims to understand inherited conditions of the pancreas. Referrals to the trial can be made by any healthcare professional across all health sectors or by individuals via self-referral, contributing to a centralised approach to case-finding.
As part of our National Cancer Plan, we have been working with members of the Less Survivable Cancers Taskforce, a group of charities focusing on cancers with poor survival rates, to identify how we can improve diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes for less survivable cancers.
Asked by: Mark Pritchard (Conservative - The Wrekin)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will prioritise (a) research into, (b) diagnosis of and (c) treatment of pancreatic cancer in the new National Cancer Plan.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Cancer Plan 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, including patients with pancreatic cancer.
NHS England is providing a route into pancreatic cancer surveillance for those at high-risk, to identify lesions before they develop into cancer. NHS England is additionally creating pathways to support faster referral routes for people with non-specific symptoms, and is increasing direct access for general practitioners to diagnostic tests.
The plan will include further details on how we will speed up diagnosis and treatment, ensure patients have access to the latest treatments and technology, and ultimately bring this country’s cancer survival rates back up to the standards of the best in the world.
Asked by: Mark Pritchard (Conservative - The Wrekin)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans his Department has to improve survival rates for pancreatic cancer.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Improving survival rates for all cancers, including pancreatic cancer, is a priority for the Government. As the first step to ensuring faster diagnosis and treatment, we have delivered an extra 40,000 operations, scans, and appointments each week.
NHS England is providing a route into pancreatic cancer surveillance for those at high-risk to identify lesions before they develop into cancer. NHS England is additionally creating pathways to support faster referral routes for people with non-specific symptoms and is increasing direct access for general practitioners to diagnostic tests.
The National Cancer Plan will include further details on how we will improve outcomes for cancer patients, as well as speeding up diagnosis and treatment. It will aim to ensure that patients have access to the latest treatments and technology, and ultimately bring this country’s cancer survival rates, including for those with pancreatic cancer, back up to the standards of the best in the world.