Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to increase survival rates for people with liver cancer.

The Department is supporting the National Health Service to increase survival rates for all cancers including for liver cancer in England by taking steps to diagnosing and treating cancers at an early stage. The NHS is working towards the NHS Long Term Plan ambition of diagnosing 75% of stageable cancers at stage 1 and 2 by 2028, meaning 55,000 more people each year will survive their cancer at least five years after diagnosis. To deliver this, the Department is driving faster roll-out of additional diagnostic capacity, establishing 135 community diagnostic centres, with capacity prioritised for cancer.

NHS cancer standards have been reformed with the support of clinicians to speed up diagnosis for patients which means people will receive a diagnosis or have cancer ruled out within 28 days from urgent cancer referral from their general practitioner (GP). In addition, the NHS-Galleri Trial is looking into the use of a new blood test to see if it can help the NHS to detect cancer early when used alongside existing cancer screening, including liver cancers.

The Government is working jointly with NHS England on implementing the delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlogs in elective care and plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to help drive up and protect elective activity, including cancer diagnosis and treatment activity.

The Department has also committed support to the Less Survivable Cancers Taskforce, which targets cancers with stubbornly poor survival rates. This partnership focuses on liver, pancreas, lung, brain, oesophagus, and stomach cancers, raising awareness of these less survivable cancers so more people understand their symptoms and go to see their GP if they have concerns.

In addition to the immediate action to support cancer services, the Government announced on 24 January 2023 that it will publish a Major Conditions Strategy. The Strategy will tackle conditions that contribute most to morbidity and mortality across the population in England, including cancer.