Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what proportion of the capital budget was used to support radiotherapy in 2018; and what proportion of the capital budget will not be committed by the end of the 2018-19 financial year.

Modernising radiotherapy services is crucial to our ambition to increase cancer survival rates and a number of strategic Departmental capital programmes have supported investment in 2018-19 in this area.

In 2018-19 around £106 million capital funding has been budgeted for the following radiotherapy related programmes:

- £46 million for the Linear Accelerator programme, part of £130 million of investment over three years; and

- £60 million for the Proton Beam Therapy programme, part of £250 million investment in two new centres by 2020-21.

This investment represents 1.8% of the total £5.983 billion 2018-19 capital Departmental Expenditure Limit.

The Department has also approved £29.4 million of capital investment in 2018-19 to Cancer Alliances to encourage local areas to find new and innovative ways to diagnose cancer earlier, improve the care for those living with cancer and ensure each cancer patient gets the right care for them.

In addition to this central programme, individual National Health Service provider organisations will also have made local capital investments to support radiotherapy from their own local capital programmes. The Department does not collect information at this level of granularity.

The Department’s overall capital budget is fully committed in 2018-19 and we work closely with NHS England, NHS Improvement and other delivery partners to ensure that it is utilised to maximum effect to support improvements in patient care.