Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve coordination across community healthcare services when diagnosing rare cancers in young people.

The Government is committed to supporting the National Health Service to diagnose cancer earlier and treat it faster, so that more children and young people survive. The NHS is improving the experience of young cancer patients across the system, including those with rare cancers.

The National Cancer Plan, published in February 2026, has pledged to speed up the detection and diagnosis of cancer in children and young people, ensuring their needs are embedded into the design of the neighbourhood health service as well as ensuring general practices identify rare cancers, including in children and young people.

NHS England has published service specifications that set out the service standards required of all providers of children and young people’s cancer services. The requirements include implementing networked care, simplifying pathways, and transitions between services.

To gain information on the experience of children and young people, NHS England and Picker carry out an Under 16 Cancer Patient Experience Survey to understand the experiences of cancer and tumour care among children under the age of 16 years old and their parents/carers, in England. The results of the survey are used to understand and improve cancer care nationally and locally.