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 address the imbalance between chemotherapy and radiotherapy spending.

The differential level of spending between different services and treatments is a feature of cost and volume. Levels of spending on chemotherapy is due to greater activity, drug, staff, equipment and facility costs.

However, significant investment has been made in radiotherapy, including £32 million to replace 17 Linear Accelerators aged over 10 years by the end of March 2022. Progress ontinues to be made in the range and availability of innovative radiotherapy, where the evidence base supports it through NHS England and NHS Improvement’s clinical commissioning policy process.