Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of staffing levels in cancer care on waiting times for patients to receive treatment.

The development of the National Cancer Plan highlighted areas where there are higher vacancy rates in some areas of the country. The Department and NHS England will work with the royal colleges to encourage resident doctors and internal medicine trainees to specialise in clinical and medical oncology to address these pressures. NHS England will also use training more directly as a lever to support improvements in operational performance, prioritising training places in trusts, often those in rural or coastal areas, where vacancy rates are higher and performance is lower.

Through these interventions, patients will see improvements now, and these training places will secure the workforce for the future. The Department has committed to the National Health Service meeting all cancer waiting time standards by the end of this Parliament, ending a decade of missed targets.

The NHS is determined to cut cancer waiting lists and treatment times. That is why the Department is investing £70 million in new radiotherapy machines in the NHS and opening 170 community diagnostic centres to speed up diagnosis. Furthermore, the NHS will continue to look at opportunities to use artificial intelligence, for example by helping oncologists plan radiotherapy more quickly and accurately. Improved contouring in radiotherapy practice will mean better outcomes and reduced risk of healthy tissue damage, meaning fewer complications for patients and less need for follow up treatment.