Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate his Department has made of the number of radiotherapy machines currently in use by the NHS which are older than 10 years.
As of 31 March 2022, there were approximately 20 linear accelerator radiotherapy machines (LINACs) aged 10 years or over in routine National Health Service use.
Since 2016, £162 million has been provided to support the replacement and upgrade of 100 LINACs. The 2021 Spending Review allocated £12 billion in operational capital for the NHS over the next three years. This investment will be managed by local systems and will include the modernisation of the radiotherapy estate, to replace any machine which is more than 10 years old.