Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to increase the availability of precision radiotherapy as a replacement treatment to (a) surgery and (b) chemotherapy during the covid-19 outbreak.

For some patients it may be clinically appropriate to offer treatment with radiotherapy where the standard care, for example surgery or chemotherapy, is not possible to be delivered. NHS England and NHS Improvement have published guidance relating to the management of cancer patients during the COVID-19 outbreak which sets out the importance of multi-disciplinary team input and communication with individual patients when making decisions about treatment plans.

This guidance can be found at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/wp-content/uploads/sites/52/2020/04/second-phase-of-nhs-response-to-covid-19-letter-to-chief-execs-29-april-2020.pdf