Asked by: Peter Dowd (Labour - Bootle)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has held discussions with NHS England on the need for a dedicated and specific cancer plan.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department works closely with NHS England on a wide range of issues relating to cancer, and to deliver the key priorities on cancer as set out in the NHS Long Term Plan. Current priorities include work on improving cancer survival rates through earlier diagnosis, and reducing cancer treatment waiting times across England, including the time between an urgent general practice referral and the commencement of 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.
On 14 August 2023, the Government published a strategic framework for the Major Conditions Strategy to consider the six conditions, including cancer, that contribute most to morbidity and mortality across the population in England. This is because we recognise that most cancer patients will have at least one other condition, so we are developing a Major Conditions Strategy that will include cancer. The Major Conditions Strategy will apply a geographical lens to each condition, to address regional disparities in health outcomes, supporting the levelling up mission to narrow the gap in healthy life expectancy by 2030.
Asked by: Peter Dowd (Labour - Bootle)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will take steps to recruit an additional 2,000 radiotherapy professionals by 2040.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
In June 2023, NHS England published the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, which sets out the steps the National Health Service and its partners need to take to deliver a workforce that meets the changing needs of the population, over the next 15 years. The plan recognises the need to increase numbers of allied health professionals (AHPs), including therapeutic and diagnostic radiographers. To address this, we will increase AHP training places from a little over 15,000 in 2021/22 to 17,000 by 2028/89, and then 18,800 by 2031/32, a total increase of approximately 25%. National funding is available to train 150 enhanced practice radiographers a year, to support the diagnosis of cancer and other conditions.
We have already seen increases in the radiotherapy workforce in NHS trusts and other care organisations in England. In November 2023, there were 894 full-time equivalent (FTE) consultants working in the specialty of clinical oncology, an increase of 40, or 4.6%, since November 2022 and 395, or 79.0%, since November 2010. There are also 3,141 FTE therapeutic radiographers, an increase of 133, or 4.4%, since November 2022 and 1,046, or 50.0%, since November 2010. We are also focused on improving cancer treatment, and are supporting advances in radiotherapy, such as using cutting-edge imaging and technology to help target radiation doses at cancer cells more precisely.