Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps he has taken to increase awareness of bowel cancer symptoms in (a) Slough and (b) the South East.

NHS England runs Help Us Help You campaigns to increase knowledge of cancer symptoms and address barriers to acting on them, to encourage people to come forward as soon as possible to see their general practitioner. The campaigns run across England and is accessible publicly, including for those living in Slough and the South East. The campaigns focus on a range of symptoms, as well as encouraging ‘body awareness’ to help people spot symptoms across a wide range of cancers at an earlier point. Previous phases of the campaign have focused on abdominal symptoms which, among other abdominal cancers, can be indicative of bowel cancer. It is the responsibility of local National Health Service organisations to consider whether they wish to run additional campaigns tailored to the needs of their local population and aligned to their service provisions.

NHS England and other NHS organisations, nationally and locally, also publish information on the signs and symptoms of many different types of cancer, including bowel cancer. This information is available at the following link:

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/bowel-cancer/symptoms/

The National Cancer Plan will have patients at its heart and will cover the entirety of the cancer pathway, from referral and diagnosis to treatment and ongoing care. The government’s goal is to reduce the number of lives lost to cancer over the next ten years, including bowel cancer.