Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to set an early diagnosis target for blood cancers.

We are determined to take all the necessary steps to improve early diagnosis for all cancers, including blood cancer. To accomplish this, the National Health Service is implementing non-specific symptom pathways for patients who present with symptoms such as weight loss and fatigue, which do not clearly align to a tumour type. Blood cancers are one of the most common cancer types diagnosed through these pathways.

The National Cancer Plan will include further details on how we will improve outcomes for cancer patients, including those with blood cancer and other cancers with lower survival rates. We are now in discussions about what form that plan should take, and what its relationship to the 10-Year Health Plan and the Government’s wider Health Mission should be, and we will provide updates in due course.