My constituents have been writing to me about lung disease.
We must take further steps to tackle lung disease, building on the work that the previous Government took to reduce premature mortality rates among patients with lung disease.
Early diagnosis of lung disease and lung cancer is important as timely treatment can help slow down its progression. Over recent years, Targeted Lung Health Checks (now the NHS Lung Cancer Screening Programme) has been rolled out in England, targeting those most at risk of lung cancer. In these areas, anyone who has ever smoked and is aged between 55 and 75 years old is offered lung cancer screening. I know that NHS England has been reviewing data from the Lung Health Checks to understand how effectively they are working, and I will be holding the Government and NHS to account for scaling up the programme so that screening is available in more areas.
Since the launch of the programme, more than 1 million people have taken up their lung cancer screening invitations and screening has diagnosed more than 5,500 people with lung cancer. I understand that 75 per cent of these lung cancers were found at an early stage (1 or 2) compared with 30 per cent of lung cancers detected outside of screening.
As the Government develops a 10-Year Plan for the NHS, it will be important to renew these initiatives to drive earlier diagnosis of respiratory diseases such as lung disease and COPD.
