Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to improve pancreatic cancer diagnosis in South Holland and The Deepings constituency.

The Department is working with NHS England to increase diagnosis of cancer, including pancreatic cancer, across England. This includes plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to help drive up and protect elective activity, including cancer diagnosis, as set out in the Elective Recovery Plan published in February 2022. In addition, the Government awarded £2.3 billion at the 2021 Spending Review to transform diagnostic services over the next three years, most of which will help increase the number of community diagnostic centres (CDCs) up to 160 by March 2025, prioritising CDCs for cancer services.

The National Health Service introduced the Faster Diagnosis Standard (FDS), which aims to ensure patients have cancer diagnosed or ruled out within 28 days of urgent suspected cancer referral from a general practice (GP) or screening services. To achieve the FDS target NHS England are implementing non symptom specific pathways (NSS) for patients who present with non-specific symptoms, or combinations of non-specific symptoms, to receive the right tests at the right time. There are currently 113 NSS pathways live, with the aim to have full national coverage by 2025.

To encourage people to see their GP if they notice symptoms that could be cancer, NHS England runs the Help Us, Help You campaigns, which address the barriers that deter patients from accessing the NHS. In addition, the NHS has allocated £10 million to trial innovations that may support earlier and more efficient diagnosis, including a trial for the PinPoint blood test and a new genetic test that may be used as a liquid biopsy for those with suspected pancreatic cancer.