Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to help reduce the number of GP visits before diagnosis for patients with blood cancer.

The Department continues to support the National Health Service to diagnose and treat cancer as early and fast as possible. However, because of the state of the NHS this Government inherited, we recognise that patients with cancers with non-specific symptoms such as blood cancer, are waiting too long for diagnosis and subsequent treatment.

To help prevent multiple general practice (GP) visits and emergency setting diagnoses of blood cancers, the NHS is implementing non-specific symptom (NSS) pathways for patients who present with symptoms such as weight loss and fatigue, which do not clearly align to a tumour type. There are currently 115 NSS services operating in England with blood cancers being one of the most common cancer types diagnosed through these pathways.

The Department recently hosted a roundtable with industry experts to discuss the proposal for Jess’s Rule. Outcomes and further steps will be confirmed in due course.