Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what her plans are to reduce waiting times for cancer treatment.

We have allocated more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25, in addition to the £2 billion Elective Recovery Fund and £700 million Targeted Investment Fund already made available in 2021/2022 to increase elective activity, including cancer services.

The ‘Delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlog of elective care’ sets out how the National Health Service will reduce the number of people waiting more than 62 days to start treatment following an urgent referred for suspected cancer to pre-pandemic levels by March 2023. We have established 88 community diagnostic centres (CDCs) to support patients to receive an earlier diagnostic test closer to home, including for cancer. We will prioritise the delivery of up to 160 CDCs to provide approximately 17 million tests by March 2025, with capacity for an additional nine million per year once fully operational.