Health: Cancer - Question

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 11:29 am on 29 November 2018.

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Photo of Lord O'Shaughnessy Lord O'Shaughnessy The Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health and Social Care 11:29, 29 November 2018

I do agree with that point, and indeed it was one of the policies announced by the Prime Minister in October. Of course we need to make more progress on early diagnosis. One-year survival rates have improved in the last 10 years but we still lag behind our continental neighbours, as we have done for decades. The noble Lord mentioned GP referrals, which have been in the news this week. The threshold for referrals from GPs to specialist cancer doctors has been reduced in line with the NICE guideline. The consequence has been that in the last seven years the number of people referred to a specialist cancer doctor has increased by 1 million—that is, an increase of 115%. Therefore, we are seeing more referrals at an early stage. We are seeing many more appointments and of course those will feed through over time into our survival figures.

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