Cancer: Health Services

The Government recognises that patients are waiting longer than they should for diagnosis and treatment. With increasing numbers of urgent cancer referrals, we are committed to ensuring that everyone has timely access to high-quality treatments and diagnostic services when they need it.

The National Cancer Plan sets a clear ambition to meet all cancer waiting time standards by the end of this Parliament, ensuring patients get faster diagnosis and treatment, including those with breast cancer. We will achieve this through a modernised, more productive cancer pathway, expanding diagnostic capacity, harnessing technology, and giving the most challenged trusts intensive support to deliver the improvements patients rightly expect.

We are taking a range of steps to improve access to imaging, including expanding capacity through community diagnostic centres, which are providing millions of additional tests, in convenient community settings.

£70 million has been invested into new state of the art linear accelerator radiotherapy machines, to replace older, less efficient machines. This vital investment demonstrates our commitment to improving radiotherapy services and will ensure that the most advanced treatments are available to patients who need it.

The Department would also like to clarify remarks made during the Health and Social Care oral parliamentary questions session on 26 February 2026 regarding cancer treatment statistics. In response to the Hon. Member for Easington's question, the former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care noted that investment in radiotherapy machines and cutting waiting lists will allow 27,500 more patients to be treated each year. The correct statistic is that the measures will allow 27,500 additional treatments each year. The Department apologises for the error.