Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the NHS press notice, entitled Convenient modern cancer treatment for patients during covid-19 pandemic, 11 June 2020, if new funding is being made available to accelerate the roll-out of stereotactic ablative radiotherapy in order for it to be delivered by April 2021; and if he will make a statement.

The Government and NHS England and NHS Improvement are committed to expanding the provision and use of stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) and has put in place a comprehensive support package to enable trusts to achieve this, including centrally funded access to both the national quality assurance programme and experienced mentors.

The expansion of SABR across the National Health Service is expected to require an investment of around £13 million and NHS England and NHS Improvement have made this available. Our aim is to ensure that by April every part of the country will be offering SABR treatment for non-small cell lung cancer and those with lung, lymph nodes and non-spine bone oligometastatic disease, in radiotherapy units nationwide. Further rollout for other disease types is planned for 2021/22.