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 help improve access to freezing and storage capacity for tumour tissues for oncology services in the West Midlands, in order to improve outcomes for hard-to-treat cancers.

The Department has taken steps to improve tissue freezing for oncology services for all cancers, including hard-to-treat cancers. Standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the fresh-freezing, or snap-freezing, of tissue samples have already been developed across pathology networks in England, including the West Midlands. It is, however, the responsibility of individual pathology services to maintain their own SOPs for the fresh-freezing of tissue samples. These protocols outline local capabilities and practices, including access and storage capacity.

Additionally, the National Cancer Plan set out actions on how we will improve outcomes for cancer patients, including those with hard-to-treat cancers, through a key commitment to focus on rarer cancers.