Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether her Department plans to reinstate the two-week timeframe for urgent suspected breast cancer referrals.

The National Cancer Plan sets a clear ambition to meet all cancer waiting time standards by the end of this Parliament, ensuring patients get faster diagnosis and treatment, including those with breast cancer. We will achieve this through a modernised, more productive cancer pathway, expanding diagnostic capacity, harnessing technology, and giving the most challenged trusts intensive support to deliver the improvements patients rightly expect.

The Department and NHS England continue to monitor performance against the faster diagnosis standard (FDS) nationally and regionally and are supporting local systems to improve performance where required. We are taking a range of steps to increase diagnostic capacity and improve access to imaging, including expanding capacity through community diagnostic centres, which are providing millions of additional tests, in convenient settings.

Additionally, we have committed to creating 5,000 learning and training opportunities per year for people in cancer-critical roles, including radiology and other diagnostic professions, to help ensure the NHS has the workforce it needs to deliver timely diagnosis and treatment.

Following a clinically led review of cancer waiting times standards, the FDS replaced the two-week wait standard because it better reflects modern diagnostic pathways and ensures the focus remains on what matters most to patients, specifically receiving a cancer diagnosis, or having cancer ruled out, within 28 days of referral.