Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many cancer patients have had their operation cancelled due to a shortage of beds in each month since January 2016.

The information requested is not available centrally.

NHS England collects the number of elective operations cancelled at the ‘last minute’ for non-clinical reasons on a quarterly basis. It does not collect the total number of cancelled operations, a breakdown of the type of operations that have been cancelled, or the specific reason for the cancellation. Operations cancelled for clinical reasons are not collected as the patient is not available for the operation. A last minute cancellation is defined as when a patient’s operation is cancelled by the hospital on or after the day of admission (including the day of surgery) for non-clinical reasons. The collection does not therefore capture elective operations cancelled or rearranged with more notice.

Quarter 3 2016/17 data, January to March 2017, will be published in May 2017.