To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate his Department has made of the (a) number and (b) age of radiotherapy machines in use by the NHS in England.

The NHS Long Term Plan committed to invest £130 million in radiotherapy equipment between 2016 and 2018, with an additional £32 million provided in 2021/22. This has enabled the replacement or upgrade of approximately 100 radiotherapy treatment machines.

The 2021 Spending Review allocated £12 billion of operational capital for the National Health Service over the next three years and the recent Capital Planning Guidance requires the majority of radiotherapy equipment to be replaced at 10 years of age. As of 31 March 2022, the number of linear accelerators aged 10 years old and over was approximately 20 out of a total of 268 machines in NHS service.