Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what recent progress they have made in ensuring equality in cancer treatment across England.

Reducing unwarranted variation in cancer treatment and outcomes is a strategic priority for the National Health Service Cancer Programme. To support cancer services and target local and national actions for improvement, monthly equality data showing first treatment rates by ethnicity, deprivation, sex and age is directly informing the restoration and recovery of cancer services. This includes targeted messaging in the national ‘Help us help you’ campaign to support people coming forward with symptoms indicative of cancer to their general practitioner. In May 2021, urgent general practitioner referrals were 14% higher than in May 2019.

NHS England and NHS Improvement have put in place single national commissioning arrangements for a number of cancer treatments to mitigate the risk of unwarranted variation in terms of access and clinical outcomes. Audits are currently being carried out for lung, bowel, prostate and oesophageal cancers and for breast cancer in older people to drive improvements in care and ensure equity. Five new clinical audits will be commissioned for ovarian, pancreatic, non-hodgkin lymphoma, kidney and metastatic breast cancer to ensure that care is being provided in line with standards and reduce variations.