Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the relationship between the quality of survival experienced by National Health Service cancer patients and the rates of length of survival of such patients.

We know that more people are living with and beyond cancer and we recognise that a number of those people will have a reduced quality of life as a consequence of their cancer or its treatment.

There are a number of pieces of work set up to address those problems. Macmillan Cancer Support published the first stage of its ‘Routes from Diagnosis’ work earlier this year, developed in conjunction with Public Health England and Monitor Deloitte. In addition, the national cancer patient experience survey and a programme of tumour specific patient reported outcome surveys are giving us valuable insight directly from people affected by cancer.

Based on the work of the National Cancer Survivorship Initiative, there is a current programme of work being delivered by NHS England in collaboration with Macmillan Cancer Support to embed a number of these priorities into mainstream commissioning. This is formally supported by reference to the Cancer Recovery Package in the recently published Five Year Forward View.