§ Mr. BaronTo ask the Secretary of State for Health how many cancer patients waited longer than two months between urgent general practitioner referral arid first treatment in each of the last eight years. [149918]
§ Miss Melanie Johnson[holding answer 22 January 2004]The data requested are not available centrally.
The NHS Cancer Plan sets out our strategy to reduce waiting times for cancer patients. A maximum two month wait from urgent referral to treatment was introduced for breast cancer in December 2002. Data on performance of this target has been reported from the first quarter of 2003–04 and is shown in the table.