Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the estimated cost to the public purse was of purchasing and installing proton beam therapy machines at the two UK treatment centres (a) to date and (b) to the point at which those machines become operational.

NHS England and University College London Hospital (UCLH) are currently working with contractors to open the Proton Beam Therapy (PBT) centre as soon as possible following the COVID-19 pandemic. It is anticipated that the first patient treatment will be in 2021.

Apart from the current impact of COVID-19, the PBT service at UCLH has been delayed historically due to the complexity of the build on a constrained inner London site and, more recently due to water ingress, as reported to the National PBT Programme Board, the Department and the Infrastructure and Projects Authority. These historic issues have been resolved.