Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they will take to speed up referrals for people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, given the pace at which the disease progresses and the need for treatment to begin quickly.

The National Health Service is implementing non-specific symptom (NSS) pathways for patients presenting with vague and non-site specific symptoms which do not clearly align to a tumour type, such as pancreatic cancer. As of November 2022, there were 98 NSS pathways and approximately 60,000 referrals have been made. By March 2024, we expect these NSS pathways to be available throughout England. This will also support the NHS to meet the Faster Diagnosis Standard for all patients referred for the investigation of suspected cancer to receive an outcome within 28 days.

NHS England’s ‘Help Us, Help You’ campaign addresses the barriers to patients seeking advice for symptoms for all cancer types. The current campaign focuses on abdominal and urological symptoms, which can be related to pancreatic cancer.