Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department plans to increase the use of radiotherapy to help reduce local cancer treatment delays.

We will improve National Health Service waiting time performance, so patients are diagnosed faster and have quicker access to the treatments they require, including radiotherapy. However, we do recognise that there is much more to be done to ensure that this is the reality for all patients across the country.

Radiotherapy is vital in cancer care, and it remains a key priority for the Government to reduce radiotherapy waiting times and provide the highest quality of treatment available. This is why the Government has invested £70 million of central funding on 28 new radiotherapy machines across the country to replace older, less efficient radiotherapy machines.