Thank you to constituents who have approached me regarding support for those impacted by cancer.
I am determined to support constituents in calling for an increase in positive outcomes for all cancer types. It was one of the top priorities we had in government, and we continued to take steps to reduce waiting times for cancer diagnosis and treatment across England, including the time between an urgent general practice referral and the commencement of treatment for cancer for patients.
We worked jointly with NHS England on implementing the delivery plan for tackling the Covid-19 backlogs in elective care and created a plan to spend more than £8 billion from 2022-23 to 2024-25 to help drive up and protect elective activity, including cancer diagnosis and treatment activity.
Alongside this we took steps to raise awareness of all cancers to improve early diagnosis. In January 2024, NHS England relaunched their ‘Help Us Help You’ cancer awareness campaign, designed to increase earlier diagnosis of cancer by encouraging people to come forward with suspected signs of cancers.
The campaign aims to reduce barriers to seeking earlier help, as well as to increase body awareness and knowledge of key red flag symptoms. This relaunch follows NHS England’s launch of their original ‘Help Us Help You’ campaigns in April 2020, a major public information campaign to persuade the public to seek urgent care and treatment when they needed it.
I fully recognise that delivering more research is key to understanding the causes of cancers and increasing survival rates of all cancers further. We invested almost £122 million into cancer research in 2022-23 via the National Institute for Health and Care Research. In addition, alongside Cancer Research UK, health departments across the United Kingdom are jointly funding a network of Experimental Cancer Medicine Centres, collectively investing more than £35 million between 2017 and 2022.
Please be assured that we would continue to work towards our ambition of diagnosing 75 per cent of cancers at stage one and two by 2028. Achieving this will mean that an additional 55,000 people each year will survive their cancer for at least five years after diagnosis. With progress made on reducing waiting times, cancer is being diagnosed at an earlier stage more often, with survival rates improving across almost all types of cancer.
If elected as the MP for the East Grinstead & Uckfield constituency, I will continue to support constituents in the call for both further funding for care and for the research needed to progress towards a cure for those impacted by cancer.
