Cancer cases and deaths current parliamentary term

Abstract

Cancer is the UK’s biggest killer. Estimates of the numbers of future cancer cases and deaths are important to galvanise policy action and plan services. This analysis brief presents projections of the total number of UK cancer cases and deaths over the current parliamentary term. Around 2.2 million new cancer cases and around 910,000 deaths from cancer are projected for the UK in the current parliamentary term. This is an increase over the previous term, and largely reflects population growth and ageing. There is inherent uncertainty in projecting future cancer incidence and mortality but the method and data used in this analysis is robust. These figures give Government a sense of the scale of the challenge ahead.

Introduction

Cancer is the leading cause of death in the UK, accounting for a quarter of all deaths each year. ¹ This results in more than 2 million years of life being lost to cancer each year in the UK. ² These figures highlight the gains that could be made through measures to prevent cancer, to diagnose it earlier, and to treat it more effectively.

However, the number of new cancer cases and deaths each year is increasing as our population grows and ages. It is estimated that the UK’s population will reach 70 million by 2026, and the proportion of people aged 65 or over will increase from 19% to 27% by 2072. ^{3 4}

Since the early 1990s, cancer incidence rates have increased by around a seventh (13%) in the UK and they are projected to rise by 2% in the UK between 2023-2025 and 2038-2040. This means that by 2040 there could be around half a million new cases diagnosed each year. ⁵

While mortality rates for all cancers combined have decreased by around a fifth (19%) since the early 1970s in the UK, the growing and ageing population means that absolute numbers continue to rise, and this could result in around 208,000 cancer deaths every year in the UK by 2038-2040. ⁶

With this in mind, cancer and cancer services are a key area for any government to tackle. This analysis brief presents projected numbers of UK cancer cases and deaths in the current parliamentary term.

Aims and objectives

1. To estimate the total numbers of UK cancer cases and deaths in the current (assumed to be July 2024 to July 2029) parliamentary term

2. To estimate the total numbers of UK cancer cases and deaths in the previous (December 2019 to July 2024) parliamentary term

3. To calculate differences between the periods in terms of total numbers, average per day numbers, and age-standardised rates

Methods

Estimation of Cancer Cases and Deaths in the Current and Previous Parliamentary Terms

The number of cancer cases/deaths in the current parliamentary term was estimated as the sum of the projected number of cases/deaths in the period 09/07/24 to 09/07/29 (the maximum length of the current term). For incomplete years (2024 and 2029), the annual number of projected cases/deaths was multiplied by the proportion of the relevant year included in the term.

The number of cancer cases/deaths in the previous parliamentary term was estimated as the sum of the observed (2019-21) and projected (2022-24) number of cases/deaths in the period 12/12/19 to 04/07/24. For incomplete years (2019 and 2024), the annual number of observed or projected cases/deaths was multiplied by the proportion of the relevant year included in the term.

Average number of cases and deaths per day in each parliamentary term was estimated as the total number of cases or deaths for the term, divided by the total number of days in the term.

Age-standardised incidence and mortality rates were calculated for the nearest whole-year periods to the two parliamentary terms (2025-29 for the current term and 2020-24 for the previous term), to match with available population data.

All calculations were completed for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland separately, and summed to obtain UK totals.

Data Sources

Counts of the total number of cases of all cancers combined excluding nonmelanoma skin cancer (ICD-10 C00-C97, excl. C44) in 2019-2021 in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland were obtained from NHS England, Public Health Scotland, and the Northern Ireland Cancer Registry, respectively.^{7 8 9} Counts of the total number of cancer cases in Wales in 2019-2020 were obtained from Public Health Wales. ¹⁰

Counts of the total number of deaths from all cancers combined (ICD-10 C00-C97) in 2019-2022 were obtained from Nomis Web (England and Wales), the National Records of Scotland, and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. ¹¹¹²¹³

Incidence counts for 2022-2025 (2021-2025 in Wales), and mortality counts for 2023-2024, were taken from projections of cancer incidence and mortality produced by the Cancer Intelligence Team at Cancer Research UK. ⁵⁶

Results

It is projected that there will be around 2.2 million new cancer cases and around 910,000 deaths from cancer in the UK in the current parliamentary term. It is estimated that there were around 1.8 million new cancer cases and around 780,000 deaths from cancer in the UK in the previous parliamentary term.

Table 1. The total number of cancer cases (ICD-10 C00-C97, excl. C44) and deaths (ICD-10 C00- C97) estimated over the assumed current (09/07/24 to 09/07/29) and previous (12/12/2019 to 04/07/2024) parliamentary terms. Age-standardised rates are for 2025-29 and 2020-24 to represent the current and previous parliamentary terms respectively.

For UK cancer cases in the current parliamentary term compared with the previous one, it is estimated that the total number will be 21% higher, the average daily number will be 10% higher, and the age-standardised rate will be 3% higher.

For UK cancer deaths in the current parliamentary term compared with the previous one, it is estimated that the total number will be 17% higher, the average daily number will be 6% higher, and the age-standardised rate will be 2% lower.

Discussion

The analysis shows that in the current parliamentary term, around 2.2 million new UK cancer cases and around 910,000 UK cancer deaths are projected. These figures give a sense of the scale of the challenge facing Government.

These totals are 21% and 17% higher than estimated for the previous parliamentary term, for cases and deaths respectively; however it is important to note that the previous term was around 6 months shorter than the assumed length of the current term. There is a smaller difference between parliamentary terms in the estimated daily numbers, and the estimated age-standardised rates, for both cases and deaths. However for cancer cases there is an increase estimated in all three metrics, and for cancer deaths there is an increase estimated in numbers of deaths, but not in rates.

The main driver of these projected increases in numbers of both cancer cases and deaths is the growing and ageing UK population. Incidence increases mainly reflect changing risk factor prevalence in decades past, including periods when smoking prevalence was not falling, and increases in prevalence of overweight and obesity. For mortality, age-standardised rates are falling – mainly due to improvements in survival – but not fast enough to offset the impact of population growth, hence the increase in absolute numbers of deaths.

Strengths and limitations

Numbers of cancer cases and deaths were projected using an Age Period Cohort (APC) model for each permutation of cancer site, sex, and UK nation. The model included attenuation to restrict exponential growth, and modification to reduce the impact of the last datapoint. APC models like this are well-established and validated,¹⁴ however projections are by their nature uncertain and the figures presented here should be interpreted with some caution.

The data used to calculate the numbers of cancer cases and deaths in this analysis includes observed data from the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. This period shows a markedly different pattern than the preceding years, with substantial decreases in both cancer incidence and mortality rates. ¹⁵¹⁶¹⁷The impact of COVID-19 on cancer services and registrations continued to be felt beyond the acute period, and therefore data in the years immediately after the pandemic are also affected. While available observed data were included where possible, even where that is known to be impacted by COVID-19, the calculation of the projected figures included observed data only to 2018, with the aim of providing more accurate long-term projections by excluding the highly unusual COVID-19 period from the data used in the statistical models. While we have validated our projected data where possible by comparing with the available observed data, there is not yet sufficient post-COVID data to robustly validate the longer-term trend.

Within our method there is an implicit assumption that the daily number of new cancer diagnoses and deaths is constant throughout the year which is unlikely to reflect reality completely, given seasonal variations, but across the time period the impact of this is likely to be minimal.

Authors

Sam Finnegan, Eszter Jardan, Matt Grant, Rosie Hinchliffe, Katrina Brown, for the Cancer Intelligence Team at Cancer Research UK.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the many organisations across the UK which collect, analyse, and share the data which we use, and to the patients and public who consent for their data to be used. Find out more about the sources which are essential for our statistics here.

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