Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate his Department has made of the number of rare cancer patients unable to access treatment options due to standard NHS funding limitations; what steps he is taking to address treatment barriers, and what steps he is taking to increase funding into rare cancer research.

The Government is committed to improving outcomes for rare cancer patients.

Decisions on whether treatments should be routinely available on the National Health Service in England are informed by recommendations from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).

The Department continues to take action to improve outcomes for rare cancers patients. This includes taking action to prioritise access to specialist treatment and multidisciplinary teams for rare cancer patients, and a commitment to explore novel procurement routes for diagnostics and treatments for rare cancer.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has a strong track record in supporting access for NHS patients, including patients with rare cancers, to effective new medicines at a price that represents value to the NHS and is fair to companies. As part of the United States and United Kingdom partnership, announced in December 2025, we will be investing approximately 25% more into new innovative, safe, and effective medicines. As part of this arrangement, NICE is now using a new, higher cost-effectiveness threshold for its evaluations of medicines. The higher threshold has already enabled NICE to recommend additional medicines, including for rare cancers, that it would previously have been unlikely to have been able to recommend.

The Department invests approximately £1.8 billion each year in health and care research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). The NIHR welcomes high-quality applications for research into any aspect of human health and care, including rare cancers.