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 decrease treatment wait times for patients with metastatic ocular melanoma.

The Department remains committed to ensuring that cancer patients, including those with metastatic ocular melanoma, have timely access to treatment and tailored medical support.

The Government supports Scott Arthur’s Private Members Bill on rare cancers which will make it easier for clinical trials into rare cancers to take place in England by ensuring the patient population can be easily contacted by researchers. This will ensure that the National Health Service will remain at the forefront of medical innovation and is able to provide patients with the newest, most effective treatment options, and ultimately boost survival rates.

The forthcoming National Cancer Plan will include further details on how we will improve outcomes for patients with cancer, as well as speeding up diagnosis and treatment, ensuring patients have access to the latest treatments and technology, and ultimately driving up this country’s cancer survival rates. This will benefit all cancer patients, including metastatic ocular melanoma patients.