Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has considered including emergency presentation as a metric for tracking early cancer diagnosis across all tumour types, including non-stageable cancers such as leukaemia, in the forthcoming National Cancer Plan.

The National Cancer Plan will seek to improve outcomes for all cancers, including non-stageable cancers such as leukaemia. The Department remains committed to the early diagnosis of cancer and to improving outcomes for patients. However, we recognise that there is more to be done to ensure that patients with harder to stage cancers, such as blood cancer, receive fast and early diagnoses.

The National Health Service 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. Blood cancers are one of the most common cancer types diagnosed through these pathways.

We have engaged extensively with Cancer 52 and other cancer charities, including Leukaemia UK to inform development of the National Cancer Plan, which will be published shortly. We have listened to concerns about existing early diagnosis targets and considered the feasibility of adopting new metrics to track progress, including suggestions from stakeholders that we track emergency presentation. Further details on our approach to early diagnosis, including how we can improve outcomes for rarer cancers, will be set out in due course.