Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to improve the (a) treatment, (b) diagnosis and (c) survival rates for people with bladder cancer.

NHS England (NHSE) has funded the following treatments for bladder cancer from the date of draft positive National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance in the last 12 months:

- September 2021 - Atezolizumab for untreated PD-L1-positive advanced urothelial cancer when cisplatin is unsuitable

- April 2022 - Avelumab for maintenance treatment of locally advanced or metastatic urothelial cancer after platinum-based chemotherapy

- July 2022 - nivolumab for adjuvant treatment of invasive urothelial cancer at high risk of recurrence.

The NHSE Cancer Programme’s key approach to improving survival rates for cancer, including bladder cancer, is earlier diagnosis. One of the principal priorities, as set out in the NHS Long Term Plan, is to increase the proportion of cancers diagnosed at stages one and two to 75% by 2028. The latest NHS ‘Help Us Help You’ campaign focuses on the barriers to earlier presentation across all cancer types, and aims to address some of the underlying challenges to earlier diagnosis. This phase of the campaign has so far run during March and June 2022 and in both months saw 1,600% increases in the numbers of visits to the NHS website’s cancer symptoms page. NHSE’s plans include repeating the abdominal and urological symptoms campaign, which addresses symptoms relevant to bladder cancer.