Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure that cancer patients receive radiotherapy treatment within the 62 day standard wait time in Stoke-on-Trent South constituency.

The Department remains committed to ensuring that all patients receive a swift diagnosis and timely access to treatments, including patients in the Stoke-on-Trent South constituency. We know that patients are often waiting too long for treatment which is why we have recently invested £70 million into new LINAC radiotherapy machines, replacing older, less efficient machines. These machines are currently being rolled out. This will be the first step in boosting productivity across the country, thereby allowing more patients to be seen per session, reducing waiting times for patients who require radiotherapy treatment.

In addition, the National Health Service is delivering an additional 40,000 operations, scans, and appointments each week. The NHS has exceeded its pledge to deliver an extra two million operations, scans, and appointments in our first year of Government, having delivered 5.2 million more appointments.