Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the National Cancer Plan will take steps to increase the number of clinical academics dedicated to blood cancer research.

The Government has announced that the National Cancer Plan will be published this year, following publication of the 10-Year Health Plan. We are now in discussions about what form it should take, including how we will ensure that cancer patients across England receive the benefits of the United Kingdom’s world-leading cancer research. We will provide updates on this in due course. We have received over 11,000 responses, from individuals, professionals, and organisations, to our call for evidence, which closed on 29 April 2025, and we are now considering those responses to inform our plan to improve cancer care.

Through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), the Department is the largest funder of research training for clinical academics in the UK, supporting clinical academics at all career stages and from all professions and specialties. Since 2006, The NIHR has supported 16,000 career development awards and 13,000 awardees across 200 different professions and specialties. Since 2006, the NIHR Academy has funded 137 academic clinical fellowships, 39 clinical lectureships, and nine awards at a doctoral and post-doctoral level in haematology. The total annual spend on research training across the NIHR is estimated at £220 million.

The Department is committed to implementing the recommendations of Lord O'Shaughnessy’s review into commercial clinical trials, making sure that the UK leads the world in clinical trials, and ensuring that innovative, lifesaving treatments are accessible to National Health Service patients, including those with blood cancer.

In September 2024, NHS England announced a new targeted treatment, Quizartinib, to be prescribed to newly diagnosed patients with a specific type of leukaemia, boosting their chance of remission and long-term survival, made available through NHS England’s Cancer Drugs Fund, which fast-tracks new innovative cancer treatments into standard care. This followed a previous announcement of the new treatment Zanubrutini, in August 2024, for those with marginal zone lymphoma, which could halt the progression of their cancer and provide an alternative to further rounds of chemotherapy.