Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans his Department has to encourage people to present for cancer diagnosis and treatment who may have avoided coming forward during the covid-19 outbreak.

In October 2020, NHS England and NHS Improvement and Public Health England launched the ‘Help us help you’ campaign, to encourage people to come forward with symptoms. The latest phase of the campaign launched on 16 August 2021 and raises awareness of abdominal and urological symptoms, and lung cancer symptoms, urging people to see their general practitioner if they have such symptoms. This is the fourth phase of the campaign. The first phase which raised awareness of generic cancer symptoms, ran in autumn 2020, followed by abdominal symptoms in November and December 2020, then lung cancer symptoms between February and May 2021.

Cancer referrals have been at record high numbers since March 2021, with the third highest number of patients referred in June 2021.