PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Cancer: Health Services (11 September 2023)

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of NHS cancer patients have waited longer than (a) 62 days, (b) 3 months, (c) 4 months, (d) 6 months and (e) 12 months in each of the last three years.

Asked by:
Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat)

The following table shows the number of first treatments following an urgent suspected cancer referral, and the proportion that waited longer than the specified time:

Number of patients treated who waited	2020/21	2021/22	2022/23
Over 62 days	38,083 (26%)	53,112 (31%)	70,929 (39%)
Over 3 months (>90 days)	16,084 (11%)	22,323 (13%)	33,652 (18%)
Over 4 months (>124 days)	5,723 (4%)	7,117 (4%)	12,343 (7%)
Over 6 months (>182 days)	1,339 (1%)	1,181 (1%)	2,252 (1%)
Over 12 months (>365 days)	18 (0.01%)	28 (0.02%)	42 (0.02%)
Total Treated	148,280	171,395	182,454

Information on the number of people with an urgent referral waiting to start cancer treatment is not held in the format requested. Monthly information is published on the backlog of patients waiting longer than 62 days from urgent general practitioner referral for suspected cancer. This shows that there were 3,344 patients waiting past day 62 following an urgent suspected cancer referral with a decision to treat.

We are unable to publicly disclose the longest wait for a patient to start cancer treatment on the National Health Service for each of the last three years as we cannot provide information which could be patient-identifiable, in line with established disclosure controls.

Answered by:
Will Quince (Conservative)
10 October 2023