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NHS 10-Year Plan

My Lords, I add my welcome for this 10-year plan. I also welcome my noble friend to her position and send my best wishes to the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Merron; I hope she recovers very quickly.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, I can see some echoes—or important themes—that the 10-year plan picks up. I was particularly interested to think about how the themes in the 10-year plan will dovetail with what I hope will be a new cancer plan that will come out in the autumn. I am particularly interested in how, for example, prompt diagnosis will be promoted. Are we going to think about stratified screening, with faster diagnosis targets, or faster access to clinical trials for patients with cancer, or speeding up access to modern medicine so that we can have those cutting-edge treatments widely available?

All that is set out in the 10-year plan and the investment—particularly the capital investment, which I welcome—leads me to believe that I can feel very optimistic about what is coming down the track in the autumn. I hope the Minister can give me some assurance. After all, one in two of us may go on to develop cancer in our lifetime, and that is an awful lot of the population.