Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he is taking steps to ensure awareness of metastatic breast cancer among NHS staff involved in primary care.

In April 2020, NHS England introduced the 'early cancer diagnosis service specification' for Primary Care Networks (PCNs), which 99% of general practices (GPs) are signed up to. This is designed to support improvements in rates of early cancer diagnosis by requiring PCNs to review the quality of their practices’ referrals for suspected cancer and take steps to improve this.

NHS England is supporting GPs to diagnose more cancers early by making funding available to embed clinical decision support tools within general practice. These tools are designed to support GPs in clinical decision making, such as whether to refer or request further diagnostic investigation in patients where they believe there is a risk of cancer, and identifying patients who may be at risk of cancer based on the symptoms they present with.

Cancer education programmes such as ‘Gateway C’ are available online and include specific courses on breast cancer, and face-to-face education sessions have now resumed and are offered by a range of providers.