Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what information (a) his Department and (b) NHS England holds on the cancer survival rate of people aged over 75; how this information is being used to improve cancer survival rates of such people; what assessment his Department has made of the quality if this information; and what steps his Department is taking to improve the quality of this information.

Public Health England's National Cancer Intelligence Network published the report 'Cancer survival in England by stage' in July 2014:

http://www.ncin.org.uk/publications/survival_by_stage

This included age-specific relative survival rates by cancer stage for breast, colorectal, lung, ovarian and prostate, for cases diagnosed in 2012. In all cancer types and for both sexes the older age groups have lower survival, this being especially evident for the oldest age groups. The difference in the all-stage relative survival between those aged 80-89 years and those aged 90-99 is statistically significant in all cancer types examined for both sexes, i.e. the oldest of the older age group have worse outcomes. Detailed survival data by age were included in the spreadsheets accompanying the report.

In addition, the Health and Social Care Information Centre publishes information on its Indicator Portal, showing breakdowns of the NHS Outcomes Framework survival indicators (see indicators 1.4i and 1.4ii):

https://indicators.ic.nhs.uk/webview/

The NHS England Five Year Forward View acknowledges that cancer survival is below the European average, especially for people aged over 75, and especially when measured at one year after diagnosis compared with five years. The Five Year Forward View ambitions for cancer include faster diagnosis, particularly: reducing emergency presentations; supporting people to visit their general practitioner (GP) at the first sign of something suspicious; supporting GPs with greater access to diagnostic and specialist advice; and expanding access to cancer screening programmes. NHS England believe that, if they are able to deliver the vision set out in the Five Year Forward View at sufficient pace and scale, over the next five years the NHS can deliver a 10% increase in those patients diagnosed early, equivalent to about 8,000 more patients living longer than five years after diagnosis.

We are not aware of any concerns about the quality of this information.