Labour pledges more money for cancer patients

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Labour has promised a £330m cancer treatment fund which will fund drugs, radiotherapy and surgery beyond what the current Cancer Drugs Fund offers, if the party wins the next election.

The funding will begin in April 2016, when the Cancer Drugs Fund expires, with £50m from the pharmaceutical industry rebate being added to the £280m a year Cancer Drugs Fund.

A Labour government would also publish within six months a new cancer strategy, as well as commissioning recommendations on how to encourage treatment of older cancer patients.

The plans will be outlined in a speech to the Britain Against Cancer conference by Labour's shadow health secretary Andy Burnham, who was health secretary in the last Labour government.

The need to supplement the current funds of the Cancer Drugs Fund by using other NHS money will be used by Burnham to criticise the government for not focussing enough on radiotherapy and surgery.

Figures from Cancer Research UK found that there are 331,000 diagnoses of cancer in 2011, with half of radiotherapy patients needing Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy, of whom a third receive it.

Burnham will say: "My goal is to make the NHS the best health service in the world for the treatment of cancer. We will only achieve that if we give patients access to the most effective forms of treatment, including advanced radiotherapy.

"The problem with cancer policy under the current Government is that it prioritises one form of cancer treatment over others and places one group of patients ahead of another. This is indefensible when we know surgery and radiotherapy are responsible for nine in ten cases where cancer is cured. It is not right that 40,000 people every year who could benefit from radiotherapy are missing out.

"This is why Labour will build on the benefits of the Cancer Drugs Fund but extend the principles of improving access and supporting innovation to all forms of cancer treatment and all cancer patients."

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