Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of (a) trends in the number of deaths from mouth cancer over the past ten years and (b) the potential role of late diagnosis in these trends.

We know that more needs to be done to improve outcomes for patients with mouth cancer. To support earlier and faster cancer diagnosis, we are now delivering additional checks, tests, and scans at 170 community diagnostic centres. As the first step to ensuring early diagnosis and treatment, the National Health Service in England has delivered an extra 40,000 operations, scans, and appointments each week since the start of this administration.

Our forthcoming National Cancer Plan, which will be published in the new year, will have patients at its heart, and it will include further details on how we will speed up diagnosis and treatment, ensuring patients have access to the latest treatments and technology, and ultimately drive up this country’s cancer survival rates, including for mouth cancer.