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 reduce waiting times for cancer treatment in the East Midlands.

The Department remains committed to ensuring that all cancer patients, including those in the East Midlands, have timely access to high-quality treatment services.

The Department has invested £70 million into new state of the art radiotherapy treatment machines to replace older, less efficient machines. These new machines are currently being rolled out to trusts and have started treating patients throughout the country. These newer, more powerful machines will reduce treatment times, boost productivity, and allow more patients to be seen.

The recently published National Cancer Plan sets a clear ambition to meet all cancer waiting time standards by the end of this Parliament, ensuring that patients have access to faster diagnosis and treatment. This will be achieved through a modernised, more productive cancer pathway, expansion of diagnostic capacity, harnessing innovative technology, and giving the most challenged trusts intensive support to deliver the improvements patients rightly expect.