Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what his long-term strategy to tackle the 30,000 missing diagnoses outlined in the Government’s Cancer Services Recovery Plan beyond March 2021.

Significant work has gone into encouraging people to come forward with the aim of restoring demand to at least pre-pandemic levels through running major public awareness campaigns, ensuring efficient routes into the National Health Service for people at risk of cancer, including through supporting restoration of screening programmes and by improving referral management practice in primary and secondary care.

After March, local systems will be expected to carry out local plans formed as part of the Cancer Services Recovery Plan and carry on with the progress that has already been made. The NHS Long Term Plan ambitions and actions for cancer remain the ultimate goal – to diagnose 75% of cancers at stage 1 or 2 and for 55,000 more people to survive five years or more by 2028.