The First Minister:

With those survival rates, there is work for the Scottish Government to do—there is no getting away from that. I have often spoken about my personal experience in relation to pancreatic cancer: I lost a dear uncle to pancreatic cancer, so the issue is very personal to me.

There are areas where we compare very favourably among those 33 countries—in liver cancer, for example, where Scotland’s survival rate is 12th, whereas that of the United Kingdom overall is 21st, and England is in 25th place. Although there are some cancer types where we are seeing progress, there is clearly still much more for us to do in other areas such as pancreatic cancer, stomach cancer, brain cancer and lung cancer.

In relation to what we are doing, I will ensure that the Cabinet Secretary for NHS Recovery, Health and Social Care writes in detail to Alexander Stewart. We are trying to speed up diagnosis where we can, and that is why we are investing in our detect cancer early programme. We are also investing in rapid cancer diagnostic services, which are currently operational in five national health service boards across Scotland. The early evaluation from those rapid cancer diagnostic services shows that hepato-pancreato-biliary or HPB cancers—liver and pancreatic cancers—are among the most common cancers that are being diagnosed through that pathway.

I will return to and end on this point. Overall, cancer mortality in Scotland has decreased by 11 per cent over the past 10 years, but there is clearly still work to do on less survivable cancers, as Alexander Stewart says.