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 increase the cancer diagnosis rate in (a) Romford constituency and (b) the London Borough of Havering.

The Department is working with NHS England to increase diagnosis rate for those with cancer across England 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, as set out in the Elective Recovery Plan published in February 2022. In addition, the Government awarded £2.3 billion at the 2021 Spending Review to transform diagnostic services over the next three years, most of which 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. As of June 2023, there are 108 pathways currently in place with the aim to have national coverage by March 2024.

To encourage people to see their general practitioner 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.