Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to reduce the number of people diagnosed with cancer in an emergency care setting in (1) Yorkshire, and (2) other regions of the country.

It is a priority for the Government to support the National Health Service to diagnose cancer as early and quickly as possible and to treat it faster, to improve outcomes. This will help cancer patients across England, including in Yorkshire.

We are improving public awareness of cancer signs and symptoms, streamlining referral routes, and increasing the availability of diagnostic capacity through the roll-out of more community diagnostic centres. We are also investing an additional £889 million in general practices (GPs) to reinforce the front door of the National Health Service, bringing total spend on the GP Contract to £13.2 billion in 2025/26. This is the biggest increase in over a decade.

Alongside improving cancer waiting time performance, the NHS has implemented non-specific symptom pathways for patients who present with vague and non-site-specific symptoms, which do not clearly align to a tumour type. To support the use of rapid diagnostic centres, non-specific symptom (NSS) pathways have been rolled out across England for patients who present with vague symptoms which could indicate multiple different types of cancer, for example unexplained weight-loss and fatigue.

The Government has announced that the National Cancer Plan will be published later this year, following the recent publication of the 10-Year Health Plan. The National Cancer Plan will ensure that cancer patients in England, including in Yorkshire, will have access to the best cancer care and treatments. It will have patients at its heart and will cover the entirety of the cancer pathway, from referral and diagnosis to treatment and ongoing care.