Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has taken recent steps with NHS England to help support NHS trusts to make contractual arrangements for minimally invasive cancer therapies.

NHS England commissions selective internal radiation therapy (SIRT) as a treatment choice for patients with unresectable advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), in accordance with Technology Appraisal 688 and metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC), in accordance with an NHS England clinical commissioning policy.

In total, following regional completion of contractual negotiations and changes, we expect that there will be 19 providers of SIRT in the National Health Service in England. Nine will offer SIRT as a treatment for both HCC and mCRC, a further nine will offer SIRT as a treatment for HCC only and a single provider will offer SIRT as a treatment for mCRC.