Cancer Workforce and Early Diagnosis — [Mr George Howarth in the Chair]

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 10:50 am on 8 January 2019.

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Photo of Steve Brine Steve Brine The Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health and Social Care 10:50, 8 January 2019

That was very decisive of you, Mr Howarth. It is quite cold in here, but the ministerial radiator next to me is doing very nicely. Note to the Box: must get radiator for shadow Minister.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I wish everybody a happy new year. I congratulate Jim Fitzpatrick on securing the debate. It is good to see him again. He has impeccable timing; I am not sure if he knew that the plan would be published when he applied for the debate. If he could let me know how managed that, I would be very grateful.

The hon. Gentleman and everybody else talked about cancer survival rates. The truth is that they have never been higher and have increased year on year over the last decade or so. The reason for that is not only the investment and policy decisions by the last Government and this Government but, as the shadow Minister said, the hard work of NHS staff up and down our country. They work tirelessly, going over and above to give cancer patients the care and compassion that they need. I place on the record my thanks to them, which was perhaps not said enough in the Chamber yesterday. We are not in the slightest bit complacent, though. At the end of the day, one death from cancer still devastates somebody’s life and their family’s life. We know that we need to do so much more to ensure that we deliver the world-class cancer outcomes in England that all of us want and expect for our constituents.

In introducing the debate, the hon. Gentleman set the tone when he talked about the workforce. He said that the workforce is, in a way, the rock on which to build the church. I will start with that. Where we cannot prevent cancer, which I will come on to, we must ensure that we have the right staff with the appropriate skills and expertise to ensure that patients receive the best care. The NHS is nothing without its 1.3 million staff. It is the biggest employer of trained staff in the world. In 2017, Health Education England published the first ever cancer workforce plan, in which we set out ambitious plans to expand the capacity and skills of the NHS cancer workforce, committing to invest in 200 clinical endoscopists in addition to the 200 already committed to, as well as an extra 300 reporting radiographers, by 2021. However, we know that we need to go much further and do more than that. The Prime Minister set out our new ambitions on cancer in her party conference speech, and we also set out our early diagnosis targets in the long-term plan and our survival targets. As the Secretary of State set out yesterday, the long-term plan is the next step in our mission to make the NHS the world-class employer that delivers the cancer survival rates that we want.

To deliver on those commitments, we have asked Baroness Dido Harding, chair of NHS Improvement, to chair a rapid programme of work for the Secretary of State. She will engage with staff, employers, professional organisations, trade unions, charities in this space, think-tanks, Members and all-party parliamentary groups to build a workforce implementation plan that matches the ambition set out in the long-term plan. She will provide interim recommendations to the Secretary of State by the end of March on how supply, reform, culture and leadership challenges can be met, and then final recommendations later in the year, around the time of the spending review, as part of the broader implementation plan that will be developed at all levels to make the long-term plan a reality.

The hon. Gentleman and others asked about the work of HEE and Baroness Harding. The announcement of the long-term plan superseded HEE’s plans to publish a longer-term cancer workforce plan. HEE will now work with NHS England and Baroness Harding’s NHS Improvement under the plan, led by the Baroness, to understand the longer workforce implications for the development of the plan. As I said, recommendations will be made in March, with a full implementation plan published later in the year. I did not say, “Soon.” I cannot give the House an exclusive this morning.

The hon. Gentleman also talked about Sir Mike Richards’s screening review. That will make initial recommendations by Easter this year and be finalised in the summer to, as it says in the plan,

“further improve the delivery of the screening programmes, increase uptake—

I know that the shadow Minister is concerned about that; I am too—

“and learn the lessons from the recent issues around breast and cervical screening, and modernise and expand diagnostic capacity.”