National Cancer Plan

Debate between Douglas McAllister and Ashley Dalton

Thursday 5th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Ashley Dalton]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. It was my pleasure to meet Lorraine. I will, if I can, say very quickly that when we met her, she was explaining to officials how she did not have what she needed for her daughter when they were sent to the specialist care unit straight from A&E. One official said, “Why couldn’t you go and get what you needed?” We all looked at him and said that nobody was going to leave that child. That is why this cancer plan recognises the importance of wraparound care for children and young people, so that parents can support their families best.

[Douglas McAllister (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Minister on this excellent and ambitious plan. If we are to achieve its targets, improvements need to be made on delivering earlier and better diagnosis, particularly for cancers with extremely low survival rates, such as acute myeloid leukaemia, which has a five-year survival rate of just 22%. In my West Dunbartonshire constituency, 46 people have lost their lives to leukaemia in the past five years. I have lived with leukaemia over the past 18 years. Can the Minister confirm that, as part of this plan, improvements will be made in the survival rate for acute myeloid leukaemia?

[Ashley Dalton]

As my hon. Friend knows—I do not need to tell him this—brain tumours, leukaemia and other less stageable cancers cannot be assessed in the usual way, so we need different measures to understand how early they are being caught. That is why this plan commits to the regular publication of data on emergency cancer diagnoses as a key indicator, exposing where these cancers are picked up too late so that we can drive earlier detection and focus attention where it is most urgently needed.