Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to increase the number of patients with lower gastrointestinal cancers who receive their first treatment within 62 days of being urgently referred by their GP.

The Department is taking steps to reduce cancer treatment waiting times across England, including the time between an urgent general practice referral and the commencement of treatment for cancer for patients. The Government is working jointly with NHS England on implementing the delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 related backlogs in elective care, and plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to help drive up and protect elective activity, including cancer diagnosis and treatment.  Interventions include a pathway re-design to maximise capacity, including comprehensive faecal immunochemical test implementation to detect lower gastrointestinal cancers faster.

In the 2023/24 Operational Planning Guidance, NHS England announced that it is providing over £390 million in cancer service development funding to Cancer Alliances in each of the next two years, to support delivery of the strategy and the operational priorities for cancer, which includes increasing and prioritising diagnostic and treatment capacity.

Additionally, the Government published the Major Conditions Strategy Case for Change and Our Strategic Framework on 14 August 2023, which sets out our approach to making the choices over the next five years that will deliver the most value in facing the health challenges of today, and of the decades ahead, including for cancer.