Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, when he expects that the NHS will next meet the target for 85 per cent of cancer patients to start treatment within 62 days.

NHS England, in its Business Plan for 2015/16, sets out how it will support the National Health Service to meet NHS Constitution commitments on cancer waiting times by March 2016. This includes the standard that 85% of patients should begin first definitive treatment within 62 days from urgent general practitioner referral for suspected cancer.

To support the NHS, a cancer waiting times taskforce, jointly chaired by NHS England’s National Clinical Director for Cancer and the NHS Trust Development Authority’s Medical Director, has developed a set of high impact priorities to improve current performance and meet the operational standards. Alongside Monitor and the NHS Trust Development Authority, NHS England’s regional teams are working with clinical commissioning groups and NHS providers to ensure poor performance is effectively addressed.