Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the adequacy of the availability of radiotherapy services to patients in Devon.

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, including Devon.

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 LINAC radiotherapy machines across the country to replace older, less efficient radiotherapy machines. The new machines were allocated across England and funding was allocated to trusts using criteria that NHS England developed. These criteria focused on the age of the machine being replaced, the proportion of older machines in use within the trust, and the trust’s performance on radiotherapy. The University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust, the local provider for cancer services in Devon, has been awarded funding for a replacement machine.

The forthcoming National Cancer Plan will include further details on how we will ensure all patients have access to the latest treatments and technology, ultimately driving up this country’s cancer survival rates.