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The share of cancers diagnosed at the most treatable stages in England has barely shifted in a decade and any delay in a promised national plan to tackle the disease will put lives at risk, the head of a leading charity has warned.
Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said the government blueprint announced by health secretary Wes Streeting last year, and expected this autumn, needed to spell out how targets for earlier diagnosis, and speed of access to treatment, would be met and funded.
Peer countries such as Norway and Australia consistently outstrip the UK in five-year survival rates of multiple forms of the disease, including lung cancer, the most fatal type in Britain.
Some key standards in England have been missed for a decade, despite scientists forecasting a sharp rise in cancer cases in the coming decades because of factors such as ageing, obesity and tobacco.
“We’re falling behind . . . and without an ambitious, fully funded cancer strategy, patients will pay the price,” Mitchell told the Financial Times. “Any delays in publishing [the national plan] could cost lives.”
Mitchell said it was “disappointing” that the health secretary’s 10-year plan for the NHS, published in July, had failed to reiterate a pledge by the previous Conservative government that lung screening would be introduced for high-risk over-55s by 2030.
The long-term trend was a reduction in cancer mortality, with rates in the UK tumbling by about 22 per cent in the past 10 years, she added, but ministers needed to make greater strides in early diagnosis, “a policy objective of different governments for nearly a decade now”.
Nine in 10 people diagnosed with bowel cancer, for example, will survive if diagnosed at stage one, the earliest stage, compared with just one in 10 at stage four, the most severe. But only about 55 per cent of cancers in England are diagnosed at stage one or two, according to Cancer Research UK.
A key NHS target — that 75 per cent of patients should begin cancer treatment within 62 days of an urgent referral — has not been achieved since 2015.
Yet the swelling numbers of people contracting the disease means the problem is becoming more acute, with the charity estimating 2.2mn new cases in the UK between 2024 and 2029, up 20 per cent on the previous five-year period.
Mitchell said the government’s cancer strategy must commit to earlier diagnosis and set a target for meeting waiting times by the end of the current parliament. It also needed to deliver on a pledge to roll out lung cancer screening by 2030, in a return to the previous Tory promise, and address staff shortages, she added.
In England, only about one-third of lung cancer cases are diagnosed at stages one and two.
Mitchell also expressed concern at the slow progress of the Tobacco and Vapes bill. First announced by the previous Tory government and taken up by Labour when it won power last year, the legislation would make it illegal for anyone born in or after 2009 to buy cigarettes.
While smoking was responsible for about 160 new cancer cases every day, the bill, now under scrutiny in the House of Lords, was “not moving through parliament as quickly as it should be”, she added.
The Department of Health and Social Care said: “Cancer care is our urgent priority as we turn around our NHS after more than a decade of neglect. We’re already seeing progress, with 97,000 more people having cancer diagnosed or ruled out within 28 days between July 2024 and June 2025, compared to the same period the previous year. The National Cancer Plan will set out how we will help put the NHS back at the forefront of global cancer care.”
Read the full article here