Clive Jones

I would like to speak to new clause 137. Cancer Research UK estimates that, in the six months since the national cancer plan was published, over 168,000 people were diagnosed with cancer in England. The number of those diagnosed is at a record high and this is projected to continue. Almost one in two of us will get cancer in our lifetime, and no one in this country is untouched by the disease. I welcome the Government’s ambition to improve cancer outcomes in the national cancer plan. Alongside my amendment to the Health Bill, my current private Member’s Bill seeks to guarantee that the Government make progress towards delivering these targets and are held to account by Parliament on that. Over the past five decades, cancer survival has more than doubled because of lifesaving research, earlier detection and cutting-edge treatments. However, in the last decade progress has slowed, and the 10-year cancer survival index was better in the early 2000s than in the 2010s, so we are in danger of going backwards. The national cancer plan commits to meeting cancer waiting times targets by the end of this Parliament. The previous Government failed to do that, and I really hope that this Government will manage it. It is also important that these targets are met, alongside a full range of commitments in the plan. The Health and Care Act 2022 required the Secretary of State to include cancer outcome objectives in the annual mandate set by the Secretary of State for NHS England, and those outcome objectives explicitly took priority over other cancer objectives. I have tabled this amendment because the current Health Bill abolishes that mandate, including the previous statutory requirement for cancer outcome objectives to be prioritised over other cancer objectives, and a similar duty has not been replicated elsewhere in the Bill. With the removal of the statutory requirement to prioritise cancer outcomes over other cancer objectives in the health system, there is a very real concern that progress on cancer outcomes risks being deprioritised amid the competing priorities of a Department facing many external pressures. I am therefore seeking assurances from the Minister that, despite the disruption of the ongoing merger and the removal of the cancer outcomes clause, progress on delivering the transformation laid out in the national cancer plan will be delivered, and that it remains a priority for the new Prime Minister and the new Secretary of State. I ask the Minister to guarantee that the capacity needed to drive forward this essential work on cancer is protected.