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 include commitments to (a) improve diagnostic pathways and (b) reduce delays in identifying blood cancers at an early stage.

The Government has announced that the National Cancer Plan will be published later this year, following the recent publication of the 10-Year Health Plan. The National Cancer Plan will ensure that all cancer patients, including patients with blood cancer, will have access to the best cancer care and treatments. It will have patients at its heart and will cover the entirety of the cancer pathway, from referral and diagnosis to treatment and ongoing care.

The Department is supporting the National Health Service to reduce the number of cancers diagnosed in emergency care settings, by improving waiting times for cancer diagnosis and treatment, starting by delivering an extra 40,000 operations, scans, and appointments each week.

Alongside improving cancer waiting time performance, the NHS has implemented non-specific symptom pathways for patients who present with vague and non-site-specific symptoms, which do not clearly align to a tumour type. This includes blood cancer, which is one of the most common cancers diagnosed via these pathways.

Further actions on improving the survival of all cancers, including blood cancer, will be outlined in the forthcoming National Cancer Plan.