Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to improve survival rates for people with pancreatic cancer.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England is already delivering a range of interventions that are expected to increase early diagnosis and improve outcomes for those with pancreatic cancer, therefore no additional steps are being taken by the Department. NHS England’s work includes providing a route into pancreatic cancer surveillance for those at inherited high-risk to identify lesions before they develop into cancer and diagnose cancers sooner. This creates new pathways to support faster referral routes for people with non-specific symptoms that could be linked to a range of cancer types, and increasing general practitioner direct access to diagnostic tests. NHS England have formed an expert group to consider a pathway for Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary cancers, including pancreatic cancer.
NHS England is also funding a new audit into pancreatic cancer to provide regular and timely evidence to cancer service providers of where patterns of care in England may vary, to increase the consistency of access to treatments and to stimulate improvements in cancer treatment and outcomes for patients. In addition to this, the Getting it Right First-Time team in NHS England is undertaking a deep dive into pancreatic cancer, which will highlight actions NHS providers need to take to improve services, as well as gathering examples of good practice to share.
Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of (a) NHS treatment standards and (b) the adequacy of survival rates for people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Standards for service delivery covering both benign and malignant disease is set out in the
NHS England’s Hepato-Pancreatic Biliary (HPB) service specification.
With support and input from HPB cancer clinical experts and patient and public voice representatives, including Pancreatic Cancer UK, the service specification has recently been revised to reflect current care pathways and update references to national policy, guidance and guidelines, including guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. The revised specification is expected to be in use across the National Health Service in England by April 2024.
Although no specific assessment has currently been made on the adequacy of the survival rates for people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, the Government is committed to diagnosing 75% of stageable cancers at stage 1 & 2 by 2028. This threshold is key to improving outcomes and survival rates, including for people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department plans to take to improve (a) outcomes and (b) survival rates for people with pancreatic cancer; and if she will make an assessment of the implications for her policies of the report by Pancreatic Cancer UK entitled Don’t Write Me Off.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England is delivering a range of interventions that are expected to increase early diagnosis and improve outcomes for those with pancreatic cancer. This includes providing a route into pancreatic cancer surveillance for those at inherited high-risk to identify lesions before they develop into cancer and diagnose cancers sooner, creating new pathways to support faster referral routes for people with non-specific symptoms that could be linked to a range of cancer types, and increasing direct access for general practitioners to diagnostic tests. A group has been formed to consider a pathway for Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary cancers, including pancreatic cancer.
NHS England is also funding a new audit into pancreatic cancer to provide regular and timely evidence to cancer service providers of where patterns of care in England may vary, to increase the consistency of access to treatments and to stimulate improvements in cancer treatment and outcomes for patients.
In addition to this, the Getting it Right First-Time team in NHS England is undertaking a deep dive into pancreatic cancer, which will highlight actions National Health Service providers need to take to improve services, as well as gathering examples of good practice to share.
The Department does not currently intend to undertake an assessment of the Don’t Write Me Off report as NHS England is already taking steps to improving pancreatic care pathways.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will fund specialist pancreatic cancer roles in every Cancer Alliance.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
There are no plans to fund specialist pancreatic cancer roles in every Cancer Alliance.
Pancreatic cancer is difficult to diagnose due to its unspecific symptoms. NHS England plans to streamline cancer pathways to support diagnosis within 28 days by implementing non-symptom specific (NSS) pathways for patients who present with non-specific symptoms that can indicate several cancers, as well as implementing timed cancer pathways.
Since 2019, Cancer Alliances have been developing new dedicated urgent diagnostic pathways for these patients so that every cancer patient with concerning, but non-specific symptoms gets the right tests at the right time in as few visits as possible. By March 2024, the NSS programme will achieve full population coverage across England for non-specific symptom pathways as set out in the 2023/24 NHS Planning Guidance.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of implementing an optimal care pathway for pancreatic cancer.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department does not currently have plans to make an assessment as NHS England already has work in place to improve the diagnosis, treatment and care of those with pancreatic cancer. NHS England’s ‘Getting it Right First Time’ (GIRFT) programme has appointed a team of five specialist clinicians to lead a national review into services for pancreatic cancer patients in England.
The new workstream supports the delivery of the Optimal Care Pathway, a Pancreatic Cancer UK-led initiative which has brought together 300 health professionals and people affected to agree on how standards of diagnosis, treatment and care of those with pancreatic cancer and their families can be improved.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make a comparative estimate of pancreatic cancer survival rates in (a) the UK and (b) other comparable nations.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No comparative estimate has been made. The one-year net survival estimates with 95% confidence intervals for adults (aged 15 years old to 99 years old) diagnosed between 2016 and 2020, followed up in 2021 in England was 27.7%, and the five year net survival estimates with 95% confidence intervals for adults (aged 15 years old to 99 years old) diagnosed between 2016 and 2020, followed up in 2021 in England was 8.3%.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of implementing a 21-day treatment standard for pancreatic cancer.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No assessment has been made.
NHS England announced in August 2023 that cancer standards would be changed, in line with the recommendations of clinicians within the ‘Clinically-led review of NHS cancer standards’, which was published in March 2022.
The review is available at the following link: https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/clinically-led-review-of-nhs-cancer-standards-models-of-care-and-measurement/
This will see the current ten cancer standards reduced to three - the Faster Diagnosis Standard, the 31-day treatment standard, and the 62-day diagnosis and treatment standard.
Asked by: Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what support his Department is providing for work on a pancreatic cancer vaccine; and what his Department's timeline is for clinical trials of the vaccine.
Answered by Will Quince
The Government is supporting the development of cancer vaccines. Through the Cancer Mission we announced £22.5 million funding for immune-based cancer therapies, including cancer vaccines, targeted to a patient’s specific cancer, and for early cancer diagnostics.
In addition, the NHS England Cancer Vaccine Launchpad was created this year to support the delivery of cancer vaccine trials across England, enabling more patients to access trials for these groundbreaking therapies. While the Department does not have timelines for pancreatic cancer vaccine trials specifically, this pathway will seek to support such trial activity.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to tackle regional disparities in pancreatic cancer survival rates.
Answered by Will Quince
Reducing inequalities and variation in cancer treatment is a priority for the Government, as is increasing early cancer diagnosis, which is a key contributor to reducing cancer health inequalities and improving survival rates, as set out in the NHS Long Term Plan.
The pancreatic cancer clinical audit, led by the Royal College of Surgeons, began in 2021, with the first outcomes expected in 2024. A key aim of the audit is to support services in the National Health Service to stimulate improvements in cancer detection, treatment, and outcomes for patients, including improving survival rates.
To improve early diagnosis, the NHS is implementing non-specific symptom pathways (NSS) for patients who present with vague and non-site specific symptoms which do not clearly align to a tumour type. This includes symptoms of pancreatic cancer. By March 2024, the NSS programme will achieve full population coverage across England for non-specific symptom pathways as set out in the 2023/24 NHS Operational Planning Guidance.
On 24 January 2023, the Government announced that it will publish a Major Conditions Strategy. The strategy will cover cancer as one of the six conditions that contribute most to morbidity and mortality across the population in England. The strategy will apply a geographical lens to each condition to address regional disparities in health outcomes, supporting the levelling up mission to narrow the gap in healthy life expectancy by 2030. We published the Major Conditions Strategy Case for Change and Our Strategic Framework on 14 August 2023 which sets out our approach to making the choices over the next five years that will deliver the most value in facing the health challenges of today and of the decades ahead, including for cancer.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to increase the cancer diagnosis rate in (a) Romford constituency and (b) the London Borough of Havering.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department is working with NHS England to increase diagnosis rate for those with cancer across England and plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to help drive up and protect elective activity, including cancer diagnosis, as set out in the Elective Recovery Plan published in February 2022. In addition, the Government awarded £2.3 billion at the 2021 Spending Review to transform diagnostic services over the next three years, most of which will help increase the number of Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs) up to 160 by March 2025, prioritising CDCs for cancer services.
The National Health Service has implemented ‘non-specific symptom pathways’ for patients who have symptoms that do not align to a particular type of tumour, including for non-specific symptoms of pancreatic cancer. As of June 2023, there are 108 pathways currently in place with the aim to have national coverage by March 2024.
To encourage people to see their general practitioner if they notice symptoms that could be cancer, NHS England runs the ‘Help Us, Help You’ campaigns, which address the barriers that deter patients from accessing the NHS.