Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what (a) steps his Department has taken and (b) recent progress has been made towards increasing cancer survival rates.

The Government remains committed to the National Health Service Long Term Plan ambition to increase survival rates, so that an additional 55,000 people survive their cancer for 5 years or more each year by 2028.

We continue to focus on delivering earlier diagnosis, which will help to improve survival rates, through projects such as our Targeted Lung Health Check programme and implementation of Rapid Diagnostic Centre pathways.

NHS England and Improvement invested an additional £150m in imaging and endoscopy equipment in 2020-21. The £325 million capital funding from the 2020 Spending Review in diagnostics will also help to speed up diagnostics and improve patient outcomes.

The NHS is also working to improve survival outcomes by introducing cutting-edge new treatments. The pandemic has allowed us to accelerate activity in some key areas such as the adoption of new technologies and treatment methods, and we will continue to look for opportunities to further increase our efforts.

Based on the latest data available up to 2017, one-year survival rates for all cancers combined are at a record high in the UK. Between 2003 and 2018, the one-year survival for all cancers combined increased from 63.6% to 73.9%. Between 2003 and 2014, the five-year survival for all cancer combined increased from 45.7% to 54.6%.