Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what additional funding his Department plans to make available for implementation of the recommendations of the Independent Cancer Taskforce.

By 2020-21, the Government will increase funding for the National Health Service by £10 billion a year in real terms compared with 2014-15, to support the implementation of the NHS’s own plan - the NHS Five Year Forward View - to transform services across the country. The Government is backing the NHS plan and enabling it to go further – by investing £2 billion more than the £8 billion the NHS asked for – delivering government objectives including improved access to cancer treatments.

As part of the response to the independent Cancer Taskforce’s recommendations, in September 2015, we announced funding of up to £300 million a year by 2020 to increase diagnostic capacity to meet the new target that patients will be given a definitive cancer diagnosis, or the all clear, within 28 days of being referred by a general practitioner.