Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to improve diagnosis times for pancreatic cancer.

The Department is working with NHS England to improve diagnosis for those with cancer, including pancreatic cancer. The Elective Recovery Plan, published on 8 February 2022, set out the ambition that 75% of patients who have been urgently referred by their general practitioner (GP) for suspected cancer will be diagnosed or have cancer ruled out within 28 days by March 2024. To deliver this plan, the Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to help drive up and protect elective activity, including cancer diagnosis.

In addition, the Government has awarded £2.3 billion to transform diagnostic services over the next three years. Most of this will help increase the number of community diagnostic centres (CDCs) up to 160 by March 2025, prioritising CDCs for cancer services.

The National Health Service has implemented ‘non-specific symptom pathways’ for patients who have symptoms that do not align to a particular type of tumour, including for non-specific symptoms of pancreatic cancer. There are 103 pathways currently in place, with the aim being to have national coverage by March 2024.

To encourage people to see their GP if they notice symptoms that could be cancer, NHS England runs the ‘Help Us, Help You’ campaigns, which address the barriers that deter patients from accessing the NHS.

In addition, the NHS has allocated £10 million to innovations to support earlier and more efficient diagnosis, including the PinPoint blood test and a new genetic test that can be used as a ‘liquid biopsy’ for those with suspected pancreatic cancer.