The labour Government came under fire yesterday after its wide-ranging report into cancer services revealed its woeful under-investment in tackling the problem compared to other Western countries.

In England, just £80 per head of population is spent on cancer compared to £121 per head in France and £143 per head in Germany. Just 5.6 per cent of the total health budget is spent on cancer compared to 7.7 per cent in France, 9.2 per cent in the United States and 9.6 per cent in Germany.

The Cancer Reform Strategy, published yesterday, showed the UK ranks 22nd out of 28 European countries for mortality rates among women with cancer, and is ninth for mortality among men.

The figures from 2006 show women in Estonia, Slovakia, Lithuania and Slovenia are all more likely to survive cancer than women in the UK.

For men in the UK, mortality rates are better than in eastern Europe but still lag behind Iceland, Sweden, Malta, Finland, Cyprus, Switzerland, Norway and Germany.

The Conservatives attacked the labour Government for reneging on its promise seven years ago to make England’s cancer services the best in Europe, and said cancer survival rates in the UK were still lagging far behind “nearly every other” European country.

Mark Simmonds, the shadow health minister, said: “Gordon Brown and Alan Johnson [the Health Secretary] have been forced to admit their failure to achieve the best cancer survival rates in Europe, despite the huge amount of money they’ve spent on trying.

“What is saddening is that if the UK achieved European best levels of cancer survival rates then 95 lives each day could be saved.”

Cancer programmes currently cost £4.35 billion a year and costs will increase by an extra £70 million a year under the strategy which was announced by Mr Johnson and Prof Mike Richards, the labour Government’s “cancer tsar”, yesterday.

Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat health spokesman, declared the strategy was at risk due to the Government’s “inability” to secure value for money in the NHS.

He said: “The sad truth is that too much investment has been wasted on organisation upheaval and top-down bureaucracy.”

Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said: “While the Government has spent so much of taxpayers’ money, the UK is still lagging behind the rest of Europe in cancer survival rates. Sadly, today’s updated cancer strategy fails to clearly set out how we will turn that round.”

Spending on cancer has increased by 27 per cent over the last three years, making it the third-highest funded disease behind mental health and circulatory disease – despite being the biggest killer.

There has also been considerable variation on spending among primary care trusts in England. Even after variations in the population are taken into account, the amount spent ranges from 3.6 per cent of the budget to 9.1 per cent, the report said.

According to the Conservatives, each cancer patient in Oxfordshire, where David Cameron has his constituency, receives just £5,182 per year, but cancer sufferers in Nottingham receive £17,028, which is more than three times as much.

From:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/12/04/ncancer204.xml