Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to reduce geographic inequalities in access to approved blood cancer treatments in England.

Reducing inequalities in cancer diagnosis, care, and outcomes is a key priority for the National Cancer Plan. The plan will look at the targeted improvements needed across different cancer types to reduce disparities in cancer survival, and will develop interventions to tackle these. This includes looking at protected characteristics, as well as inequalities related to socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and geographic location.

The Government is committed to improving access for everyone to treatment and care for all cancer types, including blood cancer. To help achieve this, the National Health Service in England has delivered an extra 40,000 operations, scans, and appointments each week, to ensure early diagnosis and faster treatment.

The NHS England Cancer Programme also commissions clinical cancer audits, which provide timely evidence for cancer service providers of where patterns of care in England may vary, increase the consistency of access to treatments, and help stimulate improvements in cancer treatment and outcomes for patients, including those with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which is a type of blood cancer.